Mandated Sick Pay: Coverage, Utilization, and Crowding-in
Johanna Catherine Maclean et al.
What the paper says
Using the National Compensation Survey from 2009 to 2022 and difference-in-differences methods, we find that state-level sick pay mandates are effective in broadening access to paid sick leave for U.S. workers. Increases in sick pay coverage reach 30 percentage points from a 63% baseline 5 years post-mandate. Mandates have more bite in jobs with low pre-mandate coverage. Further, mandates reduce inequality in access to paid sick leave substantially, both across and within firms. COVID-19 reinforced existing upward trends in coverage and take-up. Five years post mandate, sick leave use has linearly increased to 2.4 days per year for marginal jobs. Finally, we find crowding-in of non-mandated benefits, which we label "job upscaling" by firms to differentiate jobs and attract labor.
6 citations
Evidence weight
Balanced mode · F 0.40 / M 0.15 / V 0.05 / R 0.40
| F · citation impact | 0.44 × 0.4 = 0.18 |
| M · momentum | 0.65 × 0.15 = 0.10 |
| V · venue signal | 0.50 × 0.05 = 0.03 |
| R · text relevance † | 0.50 × 0.4 = 0.20 |
† Text relevance is estimated at 0.50 on the detail page — for your query’s actual relevance score, open this paper from a search result.