Demography article: Parental Leave: The Impact of Recent - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

Demography article: Parental Leave: The Impact

• f Recent Legislation on

Parent’s Leave Taking

The data, the methods, the techniques of analysis (or: What I learned in Demography class)

The article:

Authors Han and Waldfogel wanted

to “examine the impact of leave entitlements on unpaid leave usage by men and women after the birth of a child”

Focus years: 1991-1999 Results:

• Men—leave usage unaffected
• Women—mixed results

The Dataset: Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP)

• Objective of survey: “to provide accurate and

comprehensive information about the income and program participation of individuals and households in the U.S.”

• Purpose: “to collect source and amount of income, labor

force information, program participation and eligibility data… to measure the effectiveness of existing federal, state, and local programs”

• Survey size: “continuous series of national panels”
• Sample size: 14,000 to 36,700 interviewed households
• Duration of panels: 2 ½ to 4 years
• Respondents: 15 years old and over, self-response
• Sponsoring agency: Census Bureau
• Periodicity: continuing with monthly interviewing

Sample size & qualifiers for this study:

Women—3,803 Men------4,574 Additionally:

• Men and women who had child during

course of panel

• Were employed 3 months before birth
• Were able to be followed for 3 months

after birth

Tools and Techniques:

• Dependent variable: parental leave
• Key Independent variable: # of weeks of job

protected leave provided by law

• Descriptive analyses
• Estimated series of regression models
• # of leave weeks divided by 100 to estimate

coefficients

• 2 Methods

1. Size and type of firm 2. Size and type of firm + working hours

Note: To check sensitivity—researchers re- estimated all models, treating women as ‘uncovered’ or having no paid leave coverage

Limitations of SIPP

Researchers noted that there are

limitations with this dataset:

• Does not identify all states uniquely
• Yet states do have differing laws about

leave-taking

• Thus, researchers dropped cases from

states during years where laws differed

• These states are: AK, ID, IA, MT

Advantages of SIPP

The advantages outweigh the

disadvantages:

• Nationally representative sample
• Tracks the labor force participation of

BOTH mothers AND fathers BOTH before and AFTER births

Figure 1: Parental-Leave Coverage

• f Recent Mothers and Fathers,

1991-1999

Methods 1 & 2

Tables 1 & 2

Leave taking and Leave lengths

Women Men

Detailed information about tools used

• Regression based models used
• Researchers estimated 2 sets of

models using

• 1. ordinary least squares
• 2. Added dummy variables for state
• Controls: mother’s age, education,

racial/ ethnic groups, married, # of children

The End……