Americans, especially millennials, favor paid parental leave. And increasingly U.S. workers are also supporting paid leave that will allow them to care for loved ones or to deal with their own health issues.
As Forbes points out, millennials in particular are at the forefront of those believing paid parental leave is not just desirable, but pretty near essential as a workplace benefit.
In fact, the report cites an Ernst & Young study that finds 86 percent of U.S. millennials say they're less likely to quit a job if parental leave is offered to both women and men, and 38 percent of U.S. millennials would actually relocate to another country if it meant getting better-paid parental leave benefits.
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Because, of course, the U.S. lags behind many countries in the world in providing such benefits to its workers. In fact, between 2011 and 2015, the number of employers in this country providing paid parental leave only increased from 16 percent to 21 percent.
And, according to a study from the Pew Research Center, Americans broadly support paid family and medical leave — although they do disagree about specific policies. In addition, the experience they have in taking leave to deal with family or medical issues depends greatly on their income level, with — predictably — those at the bottom of the scale having the least access to a paid leave benefit.
According to the Pew study, people are increasingly supporting paid leave as more and more have to deal with care of an aging parent or both members of a couple work and have to rely on child care. Most, in fact, say that employers rather than the government, should pay the cost of such leave, but they aren't in agreement over whether that employer-provided leave should be mandated by the federal government or left up to employers.
There is some variation in levels of support, too, depending on what type of leave is under discussion, with 82 percent of Americans saying that mothers should have paid maternity leave while just 69 percent support paid paternity leave. And even those who support a couple receiving both maternity and paternity leave say the mother should get more than the father (a median of 8.6 weeks off for mothers vs. 4.3 weeks for fathers).
In addition, Americans feel more strongly that workers should get paid time off to deal with their own serious health condition (85 percent) than for caring for a seriously ill family member (just 67 percent).
The Pew study also finds that among the 64 percent of respondents who took leave in the past two years got at least some pay while they were off, 79percent say some or part of that pay came from vacation days, sick leave or paid time off they had already accrued. Only 20 percent of those who got paid—just 13 percent of all "leave takers" — say they had access to employer-provided and paid family and medical leave benefits.
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