The positive effect of women's increasing earnings contribution on mitigating the growth of income inequality, though considerable, could have been larger still if American women's workforce participation in recent decades had increased on a level consistent with that of other advanced industrialized nations. Making that a reality, however, would have required a very different policy environment.
Judith Warner, author
The United States is an outlier among industrialized nations in its lack of work-family policy. It is the only industrialized nation that does not guarantee paid time off for working mothers to care for a new child, and it is one of the only high-income nations that does not guarantee workers paid sick leave. Access to policies such as paid family leave, paid sick days, and family-friendly work scheduling has long been a perk awarded only to highly valued employees; this has predictably resulted in a sharp divide between those who have access to such policies and those who do not, which largely correlates with income level.
The United States' unique lack of work-family policies puts a singular burden on women, who, despite progress in men’s participation in domestic tasks, still bear the lion’s share of responsibility for unpaid work at home. Women often lack time off to care for a newborn, the ability to pay for high-quality child care, and access to the kind of predictable and family-friendly work scheduling that permits attendance at parent-teacher conferences and trips to the pediatrician. This results in a troubling number of American women pushed into lower-paying types of jobs or out of the workforce because of their family care needs. This is particularly true for low-income workers, who are the least likely to have access to work-family reconciliation policies. In the same period that US income inequality has skyrocketed, women's labor force participation rates have stalled — a phenomenon that Cornell University economists Francine D. Blau and Lawrence M. Kahn have attributed in part to the United States' lack of family-friendly policies.
American workers’ unequal access to work-family supports means that American women have an unequal shot at staying employed. Parents do not have anything close to an equal opportunity to do their best for their kids, and American children have a grossly unequal chance of getting the kind of attention, care, and financial stability they need. Inequality is reproduced multigenerationally.
Inequality has many causes and requires multifaceted policy responses. While analyzing these causes and articulating policy responses lead into highly contested political territory, there is one area where American voters share a great deal of common ground: their need and desire for measures that help families, and women in particular, reconcile their work and family obligations. In early 2014, a national survey by American Women, the National Partnership for Women & Families, and the Rockefeller Family Fund found that 63 percent of voters supported a national paid family and medical leave insurance plan. More recently, a January 2015 poll by Lake Research Partners for the Make It Work Campaign found that 88 percent of voters were in favor of ensuring that all workers earn paid sick days to care for themselves or family members; 75 percent supported making quality and affordable child care options available nationally.
The urgency of voter demand has translated into bipartisan talk about the need to acknowledge and support working families. This report will argue that it’s time to merge that talk into the ongoing national conversation about the corrosive effects of intergenerational inequality — the "dangerous and growing" trend that President Barack Obama has labeled the "defining challenge of our time."
This report will argue that work-family policies — including paid family leave, paid sick days, access to affordable child care, laws that both permit and stabilize nontraditional work schedules, and tax policies that do not disadvantage dual-earner couples — can help create a basic floor of income stability for all American families. Therefore, they should be viewed as some of the most promising and underused policy tools for fighting inequality, both in the present and in the future.
This report will illustrate that work-family policies keep women in the workforce — a necessary condition for their families' income stability and long-term economic security. To that end, it calls for the following specific policies:
- Dramatically increased funding for early childhood development programs, high-quality child care, and universal pre-K programs
- A generous paid family and medical leave program for all American workers
- Earned paid sick days for all
- Improvements in the tax code to remove penalties on dual-income families
- Measures that promote the adoption of flexible schedules that benefit employers and employees alike, as well as measures that protect hourly workers from abusive, unpredictable scheduling practices
"Inequality does not follow a deterministic process," the economists Thomas Piketty and Emmanuel Saez wrote in 2014. "There are powerful forces pushing alternately in the direction of rising or shrinking inequality. Which one dominates depends on the institutions and policies that societies choose to adopt." Public opinion has reached a tipping point in favor of policies that allow families to work, care for one another, and thrive.
It is time for public policy to catch up.
Judith Warner is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress.
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