New Research Reports
As States Eye Texas-Style Abortion Bans, Economic Costs to Bottom Line and Women are High
IWPR | Jeff Hayes and Elyse Shaw | September 13, 2021
Limiting women’s access to reproductive health care services, including abortion, can have a devastating impact on states: their economic well-being and the short- and long-term earnings of their residents. It can also have high economic costs to businesses. Abortion bans and targeted restrictions on abortion providers (TRAP) laws cost state and local economies $105 billion annually by reducing labor force participation and earnings among women.
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Stronger Together: Union Membership Boosts Women’s Earnings and Economic Security
IWPR | Chuxuan Sun, Acadia Hall, and Elyse Shaw | September 1, 2021
A powerful force for change in the workforce, labor unions bring transparency to pay negotiations, help employees secure overtime wages, and grant them greater protections. This brief shares insights on the ways unions narrow gender wage gaps and improve economic security for all women. It also discusses the union advantage and what that means in terms of increased wages to pay rent. It concludes with policy recommendations to promote women’s access to union jobs.
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Leveraging Head Start for Student Parent Families
IWPR | Lindsey Reichlin Cruse and Tessa Holtzman | August 16, 2021
Student parents face challenges that can limit their ability to enter, persist in, and graduate from college. Innovative partnerships between Head Start and the higher education system is a promising strategy to bring together essential supports to meet the needs of student parents. This briefing paper explores what this partnership might look like, and how federal and state policy could encourage greater support for student parents and their families through Head Start.
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Climbing the Leadership Ladder: Women’s Progress Stalls
IWPR | Elyse Shaw and Jessica Milli | August 9, 2021
Drawing on the Institute for Women’s Policy Research (IWPR) analysis of the 2000 to 2018 American Community Survey, as well as existing data from Catalyst and McKinsey & Company, this report presents a snapshot of women’s leadership in the U.S. to illuminate structural barriers that stubbornly persist after decades of little progress. It concludes with recommendations for employers to break down these barriers and accelerate women’s path to career advancement.
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Why is Workplace Sexual Harassment Underreported? The Value of Outside Options Amid the Threat of Retaliation
NBER | Gordon Dahl and Matthew Knepper | September 2021
Why is workplace sexual harassment chronically underreported? Researchers hypothesize that employers coerce victims into silence through the threat of a retaliatory firing, and test this theory by estimating whether external shocks that reduce the value of a worker's outside options exacerbate underreporting. The study tests whether workers report sexual harassment more selectively during recessions and whether less generous UI benefits create economic incentives for victims to remain silent.
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LGBT Community Harder Hit by Economic Impact of Pandemic
US Census Bureau | Thom File and Joey Marshall | August 11, 2021
The Household Pulse Survey (HPS) is designed to provide near real-time data on how the pandemic has affected people’s lives. For the first time ever on a population survey sponsored by the Census Bureau, the latest version of the HPS asks about sexual orientation and gender identity. The Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) adult population reported living in households with higher rates of food and economic insecurity than non-LGBT Americans.
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Direct Financial Support, Access to Male-Dominated Jobs, and Investing in Child Care Can Increase Women’s Participation in Post-COVID Workforce, Says New Expert Consultation
NASEM | Shoshana Grossbard, Chandra Childers, Adia Wingfield, and Tammy Allen | August 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic and the associated recession have significantly affected women’s workforce participation. Black and Hispanic women have been particularly affected, bringing into sharp relief historical gender and racial inequities in the labor market. This report identifies strategies that state and local decision makers can use to assist in short-term recovery efforts for women whose employment status and work experiences have been affected by the COVID-19 pandemic. It includes strategies both for supporting caregiving responsibilities and career development.
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Olive Garden’s Expansion of Paid Sick Leave During COVID-19 Reduced the Share of Employees Working While Sick
Health Affairs | Daniel Schneider, Kristen Harknett, and Elmer Vivas-Portillo | August 2021
The lack of paid sick leave for service-sector workers is potentially a threat not only to workers’ well-being but also to public health. Researchers drew on data collected from 2017 through fall 2020 from 10,306 food service-sector workers in the U.S. by the Shift Project. The report details evidence of an increase in paid sick leave coverage among Olive Garden workers, as well as evidence that this expansion reduced the incidence of working while sick among front-line food service workers.
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What If Working from Home Will Stick? Distributional and Climate Impacts for Germany
IZA Institute of Labor Economics | Marion Bachelet, Matthias Kalkuhl, and Nicolas Koch | August 2021
The COVID-19 pandemic created the largest experiment in working from home. The report reveals how persistent telework may change energy and transport consumption and costs in Germany to assess the distributional and environmental implications when working from home will stick. The findings suggest all income groups would gain from telework but high-income workers gain twice as much as low-income workers.
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