Abstracts Economics

Does Paid Maternity Leave Improve Maternal Health?

by Rebecca Elizabeth Raffel

Using state-level data from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's Wonder Natality Files for the years 1995 to 2015, I use difference-in-difference and event study models to estimate the effects of paid maternity leave in California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island on rates of pregnancy-related hypertension, chronic hypertension, and chronic and gestational diabetes. My results suggest that U.S. paid maternity leave policies decrease rates of adverse maternal health outcomes in all three states combined, with inconclusive results from California's policy on its own, but a 27.8 percent decrease in pregnancy-related hypertension from New Jersey's paid leave law.