Lack of paid sick leave increases poverty

[Judi Lynn]

It also increases medical care costs and use of welfare
Date:
May 24, 2018
Source:
Florida Atlantic University

Research conducted by Florida Atlantic University and Cleveland State University has, for the first time, quantified the relationship between the lack of paid sick leave and poverty in the United States. The data indicates that, even when controlling for education, race, sex, marital status and employment, working adults without paid sick leave are three times more likely to have incomes below the poverty line.

Findings also show that people with no paid sick leave benefits are more likely to experience food insecurity and require welfare services. Currently, only seven states mandate that employers provide paid sick leave benefits and nearly one-third of all workers in the United States lack these protections.

"Numerous studies have shown the negative effects lack of paid sick leave has on society, but this is the first time a direct correlation has been observed between the absence of these benefits and the incidence of poverty," said Patricia Stoddard Dare, Ph.D., associate professor of social work at Cleveland State. "This adds to the growing body of evidence that paid sick leave is a key factor in health care affordability and economic security."

Studies published in two academic, peer-reviewed journals, Social Work in Health Care and the American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, utilized data collected from the 2015 National Health Interview Survey to assess the effect of no paid sick leave on two key indicators of poverty, income and the need to utilize welfare services. On top of being three times more likely to live below the poverty line, working adults between the ages of 18 and 64 were also nearly 1.5 times more likely to receive income support from state and county welfare programs and nearly 1.4 times more likely to receive food stamps.

More:
https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2018/05/180524112356.htm

[BigmanPigman]

1. It also makes more people even more ill and sometimes causes death.

I know first hand.

[Doreen]

2. Odd, I am only a high school graduate with a learning disability and I

knew this years ago. I did not need to do a damn study. Pay the fuck attention to what is going on around you and you could figure that out all on your own.

[PoindexterOglethorpe]

3. Back in the mid to late '60s I worked for the phone company.

Ma Bell. I was an information operator, and it truly was a good job for a woman back then. There were advancement opportunities. The pay was quite good for a high school graduate.

But the sick leave. Ahh, the sick leave. Apparently there was an insidious fear that we'd take advantage of the sick leave by calling in sick. Hmmm. Think about that. So you could call in sick, no questions asked (other than the time a pregnant co-worker called in from the emergency room of the local hospital to say she was having a miscarriage and was asked, "Can you work the second half of your shift?" But I digress) but you did not get paid for sick time until the third day of being out sick. By which time you were going to have to bring in a doctor's note. Which meant that we called in sick as often as we would have had we been paid from day one of being sick, but we simply made do with losing a day's pay.

Some years later, I left a job with good sick leave. After ten and a half years, when I resigned that job, I left behind over 100 unused sick days. For which I got zero pay. I had used less than one day per year. Some of my fellow employees used their sick leave more or less as it accrued. The lesson I learned was that I was a fool to have taken so little sick time over the years. I got into a discussion once about this with someone who said something on the order of that companies look at sick time used and make promotion decisions based on those things. Maybe, but in those ten years I never got a promotion. Never got a raise beyond what was mandated. I truly regret that I left behind so many unused sick days.

Much more recently I've had jobs where there's a leave bank, which you can use as sick time or vacation time, and what's unused gets paid out when you leave the job. A far better system in my opinion.