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The Long-Run Effects of Taking Up Paid Leave on Women’s Careers: Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design and U.S. Tax Data

Principal Investigator(s):  View help for Principal Investigator(s) Martha Bailey, University of California-Los Angeles; Tanya Byker, Middlebury College; Elena Patel, University of Utah ; Shanthi Ramnath, Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago

Version:  View help for Version V1

Name File Type Size Last Modified
  data 01/03/2024 02:26:PM
  dofiles 01/03/2024 02:26:PM
  output 01/03/2024 02:26:PM
README.pdf application/pdf 73.5 KB 01/03/2024 09:25:AM

Project Citation: 

Bailey, Martha , Byker, Tanya, Patel, Elena, and Ramnath, Shanthi. The Long-Run Effects of Taking Up Paid Leave on Women’s Careers: Evidence from a Regression Discontinuity Design and U.S. Tax Data. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2024-01-04. https://doi.org/10.3886/E195866V1

Project Description

Summary:  View help for Summary
We use administrative tax data to analyze the cumulative, long-run effects of California’s 2004 Paid Family Leave Act (CPFL) on women’s employment, earnings, and childbearing. A regression-discontinuity design exploits the sharp increase in the weeks of paid leave available under the law. We find no evidence that CPFL increased employment, boosted earnings, or encouraged childbearing, suggesting that CPFL had little effect on the gender pay gap or child penalty. For first-time mothers, we find that CPFL reduced employment and earnings roughly a decade after they gave birth.
Funding Sources:  View help for Funding Sources National Science Foundation (SMA 1757063); Washington Center for Equitable Growth; United States Department of Health and Human Services. National Institutes of Health. Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development (T32 HD0007339); Population Studies Center at the University of Michigan (P2C HD041028); California Center for Population Research at UCLA (P2C HD041022)



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Published Versions

V3 [2025-11-04]

V2 [2025-04-29]

V1 [2024-01-04]

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