Great expectations. Photo: Jabin Botsford/The Washington Post via Getty Images The United States likes to think of itself as an exemplar — a shining city on a hill that lights humanity’s path to a better tomorrow. And in some respects, America’s self-image aligns with its reality. From our peerless research universities to our pathbreaking biotech sector to our first-in-class fleet of homicidal robo-planes, the U.S. is at the bleeding edge of many fields of human endeavor.
America is the only developed country whose citizens are entitled to none. And we aren’t just an outlier within the OECD. A 2014 United Nations report found that, among the 185 countries with relevant data, only three declined to guarantee some form of paid maternity leave to their citizens: Oman, Papua New Guinea, and the United States. Only the latter two nations are still holding out today.
The absence of a comprehensive national paid-leave program exacerbates the inequities of American life. According to the Kaiser Family Foundation, only 25 percent of U.S. firms offer some form of paid family leave, and companies with high-wage workforces are nearly twice as likely to offer such benefits as those with few high-paid employees.
Still, paid-leave policies did not become the norm throughout the West until after the Second World War. As the historian Mona Siegel argues, in the context of postwar Europe, the ambitions of women’s-rights advocates came into alignment with the needs of national economies. Their working-age populations thinned by mass death, European nations were in desperate need of both more labor and more babies.
The bill finances those benefits through a 0.4 percent payroll tax, split between firms and their employees. This is the same funding structure used by Social Security and all state-level paid-leave programs. This policy design poses some serious administrative hazards. As Matt Bruenig of the People’s Policy project argues:
Why a national paid-leave program will probably pass. Neal’s paid leave proposal has made it out of committee. But now, like virtually every other item on the Democratic agenda — from green investment to universal prekindergarten to child allowances — the fate of a national paid-leave program rests on the success or failure of a single megabill.
nhannahjones
This article says it's mostly due to WWII outcomes but like the GI Bill, I would bet it comes down to race. Americans don't want everyone to get something they see as assistance because that means Black families get it, too. Rather fill the pool w/cement then let Black kids swim.
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