Heather Boushey on Paid Family and Medical Leave

We need paid family and medical leave because our world has changed. One of the biggest transformations over the past half century has been the movement of women out of the home and into the labor market, so not it's the case that most families no longer have someone at home to provide care for a sick kid or an ailing grandparent, and since everyone is at work, everyone needs paid time off when they have those family emergencies.

What would a paid family and medical leave program look like?

The best kind of family medical leave program would be one that covers everyone--every single worker here in the country--and makes sure that workers at all stages of their career--both new workers (young workers entering the workforce), but also older workers--can access the program, and it provides a decent amount of income support while the person is on leave. An easy way to do this would to add paid family medical leave to our social security system. The social security system already provides not only the retirement benefits that we hear so much about, but also benefits for the disabled and survivors benefits. We could use those programs to expand the overall social security system to cover family and medical leaves as well, and that way we would be addressing the most significant changes we have seen in our labor market we have seen in the last half-century, which is it the fact that families no longer have someone at home.

Can we afford a paid family and medical leave program?

A paid family medical leave simply isn't that expensive. Research done for the state of Massachusetts for just that state to implement this kind of program found that it would cost about $120 per work per year. If we were to add this amount into our social security system, that would mean adding about one to three tenths of a percent to the payroll taxes that we already pay. It's simply not that expensive, but it is very important to workers and their families, so while it is a small outlay in costs, the benefits that families get--especially during these stressful times when someone is sick or has a new child--can be very significant, so that the benefits outweigh the costs.