The United States does not guarantee families a wide range of supportive workplace policies
such as paid maternity and paternity leave or paid leave to care for sick children. Proposals to
provide such benefits are invariably met with the complaint that the costs would reduce employment and undermine the international competitiveness of American businesses. In this article,
Alison Earle, Zitha Mokomane, and Jody Heymann explore whether paid leave and other
work-family policies that support children’s development exist in countries that are economically
competitive and have low unemployment rates. Their data show that the answer is yes.
Using indicators of competitiveness gathered by the World Economic Forum, the authors identify
fifteen countries, including the United States, that have been among the top twenty countries in
competitiveness rankings for at least eight of ten years. To this group they add China and India,
both rising competitors in the global economy. They find that every one of these countries, except
the United States, guarantees some form of paid leave for new mothers as well as annual leave.
And all but Switzerland and the United States guarantee paid leave for new fathers.