Last week, San Francisco became the first
city in the United States, to mandate six weeks of fully paid leave for new
parents. On Monday, New York Government announced it would allow 12 weeks of
paid leave for new parents, but only paying 50 percent of wages during the
leave.
United States is the one of two countries
in the world which does not mandate paid leave for new parents. See Figure 1, 58 percent of
countries provide funding through national social security, 25 percent provide
paid leave only through employer, and in 16 percent of countries, the employers
and the social security systems share the cost of funding.*
 |
| Figure1 |
Although San Francisco offers generous
funding for family leave, it still far behind the majority of countries in the
world in paying for maternity leave. The average number of weeks of paid leave
of all countries is 54 weeks. However, San Francisco and New York’s policies
are arguably more progressive than others, because the leave will benefit both
mothers and their partners. Therefore, although San Francisco and New York rank
at the bottom in paid leave for mothers, they rank at the top of the list in
paid leave for fathers (Figure 2).
 |
| Figure 2 |
These statistics were released by the
Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) in 2015. These
ranks and measures reflect how much time the new parents can stay with their
new babies.
Further Reading:
No comments :
Post a Comment