Symposium Shows Hoosiers Support Paid Family and Medical Leave, See Potential Benefits to Economy
When the Indiana Commission for Women hosted listening sessions around the state in 2011-12, work-based issues and caregiving surfaced as key challenges for women. In response, the Commission engaged three research teams to explore the feasibility of guaranteeing paid family and medical leave to workers in the Indiana. The results, presented Wednesday at a research symposium, showed strong support for paid family and medical leave and a clear path forward that would not only benefit Hoosier families, but the economy as well.
Lake Research Partners surveyed 600 Hoosier adults, finding 74 percent support for a statewide program to guarantee access to paid family and medical leave, with 63 percent strongly supporting such a program when they knew it would cover paid leave to care for a newborn or newly adopted child, a seriously ill family member, or for their own serious health condition. All demographic, regional, and political groups support the establishment of a paid leave program. In terms of program design, Hoosiers prefer that employees qualify for the benefit by working at least 680 hours in a given year and that employers and employees share the cost of such a program.
What would those costs be? Dr. Jeff Hayes presented estimates for a variety of scenarios, ranging from six weeks of family leave (no medical leave) to 12 weeks of family and medical leave, with each program paying 100% of an individual’s average weekly wages up to a cap of $861/week. Costs ranged from $1.50/week for the typical workers to fund a program offering six weeks of family leave to $6/week for the typical worker to fund a program offering 12 weeks of family and medical leave. These costs were estimated to lead to savings in other areas, like reductions in the number of low birthweight babies (and estimated $4.2 million savings in healthcare costs) and in the number of households applying for SNAP and TANF.
Perhaps most interesting were some of the findings from the qualitative researchers that interviewed Hoosiers...