California's paid family leave program: Low-wage workers and family leave insurance

The USA is notoriously lacking in public policies that support workers who need time off to attend to family needs.  Less well-known is the fact that, while many managerial and professional workers have access to employer-provided benefits that help support their family-related needs, the nation’s low-wage workers – a disproportionately female group – often lack even such basic benefits as paid sick days and paid vacations, much less paid parental or family leave, and thus have virtually no access to income support when they need to take time off from work to attend to family needs.

Against this background, the nation’s first comprehensive Paid Family Leave (PFL) program, which began operating in 2004, was an historic breakthrough.  Unlike the 1993 federal FMLA, which excludes vast sectors of the workforce from the unpaid leaves it provides, the California PFL program covers the entire private sector, regardless of employer size.  This paper will evaluate the program’s effectiveness as a social leveler, examining the extent to which it has benefitted low-wage workers in the state as well as the reasons its benefits have not been more extensive.  It examines in details the extent to which the program has served the state’s growing numbers of low-wage workers, including immigrants and other workers of color. 

This paper draws on unique data collected in 2009 and 2010 on California’s PFL program, including surveys of California employers and employees. On the basis of these data for California, the potential benefits of paid leave program for the nation’s low-wage workers will be evaluated more broadly.  New Jersey has a program similar to California’s that began operating in 2009, and many other states are considering such programs.   Federal legislation has also been proposed. Thus the lessons of California’s experience with PFL are relevant for the USA as a whole.