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workers, and workers who have been with their employer for less than a year, 44 percent of
<br />workers do not have access to even unpaid leave.157 Workers of color and workers with lower
<br />incomes are less likely to have access to paid leave.158'159
<br />For workers that are also caregivers for children, seniors, or other family members, there
<br />may be a similar need for — and benefits of— paid family leave. For example, some workers may
<br />have struggled during the pandemic to balance caring for children, as schools and daycares
<br />closed, and working. For new parents, paid parental leave results in fewer infant hospitalizations,
<br />lowering parental stress, increasing parental involvement, and improving the overall health of
<br />parent and child.16° COVID-19 has also increased the levels of "caregiving intensity" 161 and
<br />"caregiving burden" 162 for those providing care to seniors or older family members.163,164 When
<br />surveyed, more than half of caregivers reported that COVID-19 increased both the amount of
<br />157 Id.
<br />158 Ann P. Bartel et al., Racial and ethnic disparities in access to and use of paid family and medical leave: evidence
<br />from four nationally representative datasets, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) (January 2019),
<br />https://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2019/article/racial-and-ethnic-disparities-in-access-to-and-use-of-paid-family-
<br />andmedical-leave.htm.
<br />159 U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, Employee Benefits in the United States (March 2019),
<br />https://www.bls.gov/ncs/ebs/benefits/2019/ownership/civilian/table3 l a.pdf.
<br />160 Maya Rossin-Slater et al., Local exposure to school shootings and youth antidepressant use, Proceedings of the
<br />National Academy of Sciences, vol 117(38), pages 23484-23489 (2020),
<br />https://www.pnas.org/content/117/38/23484; Ariel Marek Pihl and Gaetano Basso, Did California Paid Family
<br />Leave Impact Infant Health?, Journal of Policy Analysis and Management,
<br />https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/pam.2210.
<br />161 J. C. Jacobs, A. Laporte, C. H. Van Houtven, P. C. Coyte, Caregiving intensity and retirement status in Canada.
<br />Social Science & Medicine, 102, 74-82 (2014),
<br />https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0277953613006631.
<br />162 E. Lightfoot, R. P. Moone, Caregiving in times of uncertainty: Helping adult children of aging parents find
<br />support during the COVID-19 outbreak, Journal of Gerontological Social Work, 63(6-7), 542-552 (2020),
<br />https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/01634372.2020.1769793.
<br />163 Note: "Caregiving intensity" is defined as the amount and type of care provided by informal caregivers;
<br />"Caregiving burden" is defined as the impacts on physical and mental health, and health -related quality of life of
<br />informal caregivers.
<br />164 SA Cohen, ZJ Kunicki, MM Drohan, ML Greaney, Exploring Changes in Caregiver Burden and Caregiving
<br />Intensity due to COVID-19, Gerontology and Geriatric Medicine (January 2021), doi: 10.1177/2333721421999279.
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