Complexity of Access - Paid Maternity Leave

Thirteen states and Washington D.C. have made important strides by passing state paid family leave despite the U.S. remaining one of the few countries without national paid maternity leave. However, the impact of this progress is dependent on program uptake, which early research has shown most states struggled with. There are implementation and application burdens for mothers, resulting in what we explore as the complexity of access. OECD countries have longer experience developing their leave systems, however, little comparative data is available on their implementation approaches, which could provide insights for effective programs. We systematically examined all OECD countries’ and U.S. states’ implementation processes to understand what approaches could lessen barriers in the following areas: application documents, assistance offered to apply, application methods, and accessing benefits.
The data is a codebook, assigned codes table for each country and state, and the database for each country and state. These were used for the results and analysis section.