Maternity Leave Policies and Women's Employmentafter Childbirth: Evidence from the United States,Britain, and Japan

This paper uses microdata from the United States, Britain, and Japan toexamine the effects of family leave coverage on women's employment afterchildbirth. Our three sample countries provide a range of family leavepolicy regimes. The United States had no national family leave legislationprior to the passage of the Family and Medical Leave Act in 1993, but manywomen were covered by employer policies as a result of other federallegislation, state leave legislation, union contracts, or voluntary initiatives.Britain passed national maternity leave legislation in 1978, but, until thereforms of 1993, only about half of working women were eligible forcoverage. In Japan, maternity leave was introduced as part of the nationallabour standards in 1947 but not all workers are covered; child care leavewas introduced in 1991 and implemented incrementally over the nextseveral years.[...]