Equal Futures

Equity Analyses

Central to laws and policies improving outcomes at scale is ensuring that they effectively reach everyone. Seemingly neutral structure features in legislation can disproportionately exclude specific groups. Over the past decade, Equal Futures and WORLD have pioneered a quantitative approach to assessing whether policies benefit all effectively. These studies include:

Eligibility requirements for state-level paid family and medical leave in the U.S.: In the absence of federal action, states are increasingly taking the lead to provide paid FMLA in the US. While every state policy has increased access to paid leave, coverage varies across race and education level as a result of policy design choices.
Eligibility requirements for unpaid parental leave and breastfeeding breaks in the U.S.: Parental leave and breastfeeding breaks are two critical policy supports to enable more mothers to initiate and continue breastfeeding, which has well documented benefits for infant and maternal health. Yet our study finds that most Latinx (67%), Black (60%), and White (55%) workers are ineligible and/or unlikely to be able to afford to take unpaid FMLA leave, while nearly a third of women are excluded from breastfeeding breaks because they work for a smaller employer.
Eligibility requirements for U.S. unpaid sick leave: Access to job-protected leave during a serious illness is critical to health and long-term employment outcomes. Using data from the Current Population Survey, the Family and Medical Leave Act (FMLA) minimum hours requirement excludes 17% of women compared to 10% of men. Employer size requirements exclude 42% of Latinx workers overall and 45% of Latino men, compared to 36% of White workers and 37% of White men. [Policy brief]
Tenure requirements and eligibility for paid leave benefits in OECD countries: All workers will at some point need time off to care for their own health or that of a family member. Without access to paid leave during an illness, following a birth, or when care needs arise for older family members, workers are at risk of job and income loss. Yet we find that, across the OECD, younger workers (age 20–29 years) were substantially less likely to be eligible than older workers for all types of paid leave, and rates of ineligibility declined consistently with each five year increase in age.
Affordability of paid leave in OECD countries: For low-wage workers, even a small decrease in wage replacement can make taking leave unaffordable. While the majority of OECD countries ensure that week-one paid leave benefits for average wage earners are above the poverty threshold, we find that workers taking maternal leave would fall below the poverty threshold in the first week in 83% of countries during maternal leave, 81% during paternal leave, and 90% during sick leave.