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. 2013 May 1;40(2):10.1177/0730888413480893.
doi: 10.1177/0730888413480893.

Paid Sick Leave and Job Stability

Heather D Hill  1
Affiliations

Paid Sick Leave and Job Stability

Heather D Hill. Work Occup. .

Abstract

A compelling, but unsubstantiated, argument for paid sick leave legislation is that workers with leave are better able to address own and family member health needs without risking a voluntary or involuntary job separation. This study tests that claim using the Medical Expenditure Panel Survey and regression models controlling for a large set of worker and job characteristics, as well as with propensity score techniques. Results suggest that paid sick leave decreases the probability of job separation by at least 2.5 percentage points, or 25%. The association is strongest for workers without paid vacation leave and for mothers.

Keywords: employee benefits; job mobility; job separation; paid sick leave.

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Conflict of interest statement

Declaration of Conflicting Interests

The author declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1
Figure 1
Figure 1a. Access to paid sick leave at main job by worker characteristics. Note. All differences are statistically significant at the p < .05 level or higher. Figure 1b. Access to paid sick leave at main job by job characteristics. Note. All differences are statistically significant at the p < .05 level or higher.
Figure 1
Figure 1
Figure 1a. Access to paid sick leave at main job by worker characteristics. Note. All differences are statistically significant at the p < .05 level or higher. Figure 1b. Access to paid sick leave at main job by job characteristics. Note. All differences are statistically significant at the p < .05 level or higher.
Figure 2
Figure 2
Histogram of estimated propensity score, conditional on covariates, and access to paid leave.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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