Roisin O'Neill

Paid Family Leave, Fathers' Leave-Taking, and the Child Penalty 

An important contributor to the persistent gender inequality in labor markets is the unequal distribution of childcare between mothers and fathers. I study the role of fathers’ leave-taking after childbirth as a factor that can mitigate this inequality. I use the staggered adoption of six state paid family leave policies between 2004 and 2020 and a pseudo-panel of parents to estimate the effects of paternity leave-taking on the gender gap in employment, earnings, and labor force participation in the US. I find that in states with paid family leave policies, child penalties (the difference in changes that men and women experience after childbirth) in employment and labor force participation are 12% and 15% smaller, respectively. There are three findings that suggest paternity leave-taking is an important mediator in these effects. First, the policies increase paternity leave-taking by 71%. Second, women whose husbands took paternity leave are 16% more likely to be employed and 13% more likely to be in the labor force in the year of or immediately following childbirth than women whose husbands did not. Third, I find suggestive evidence that fathers on paternity leave increase their time spent on childcare, allowing women to return to work.

Does Unemployment Insurance Matter More for Workers with Disabilities?  Disability and the 2020 CARES Expansion of Unemployment Insurance (with Doug Kruse and Shailee Manandhar)  Forthcoming at the ILR Review

In response to the pandemic recession, the 2020 CARES Act expanded eligibility and payments for Unemployment Insurance (UI). UI and the CARES Act may be more salient for people with disabilities than for those without disabilities given their higher rates of job loss, lower personal and family incomes, and greater obstacles in finding jobs. Using March 2008-2023 CPS data, we find: 1) disability is linked to higher UI receipt and UI values as a percent of personal and family incomes; 2) the CARES UI supplement had especially favorable effects on incomes and poverty status for workers with disabilities in 2020; and 3) workers with disabilities who receive UI are especially likely to be employed the following March, an effect that may have been magnified by the CARES UI supplement. The results suggest that UI may play a salutary role in maintaining the health and job readiness of workers with disabilities. 

How Do Minimum and Subminimum Wages Affect Employment of People with Disabilities? (with Doug Kruse and Shailee Manandhar)

While there has been extensive analysis of the effects of minimum wage laws on employment in general, there has been no direct analysis of their effect on the employment of people with disabilities. In addition, there has not been a rigorous analysis of the effects of the subminimum wage provision of the Fair Labor Standards Act, which allows employers to pay subminimum wages to workers with disabilities under certain circumstances. This practice is controversial; the Biden administration and many federal legislators support phasing out subminimum wage employment, and many states have been phasing such programs out. In this study, we use American Community Survey and Current Population Survey data over the 2008-2022 period, combined with state-level data on changes in minimum and subminimum wage provisions, to do a stacked triple-difference analysis of their effects on the employment and earnings of people with disabilities.

The Labor Market Value of College Alumni Networks with Natee Amornsiripanitch, Sid Biswas, and Keyoung Lee