Why Firms Offer Paid Parental Leave: An Exploratory Study

Claudia Goldin, Sari Pekkala Kerr and Claudia Olivetti

No 26617, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Why do competitive firms in the US provide paid parental leave (PPL)? Which firms do and to what extent? We use several firm- and individual-level data sets to answer these questions. These include the BLS-Employee Benefit Survey (EBS) for 2010 to 2018 and an extensive firm-level data collection that we compiled. Our work is undergirded by a two-period model with competitive firms whose workers vary by their optimal firm-specific training and the probability that each will remain on the job after PPL is taken. We find that firm-provided PPL has greatly increased in the last two decades and generally covers new fathers. The levels of provision differ greatly by the industry, firm size, and the degree of firm-specific training. But even the top-of-the-line firm in the US provides fewer fully paid parental weeks than does the median OECD nation.

JEL-codes: J13 J2 J32 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-dem, nep-hrm, nep-lma and nep-ltv
Note: CH DAE LS
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (18)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w26617.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:26617

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w26617

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().