Compared to unpaid leave, paid family leave may better help working parents balance the competing needs of job and family early in a child's life, among other advantages. Yet the United States remains one of only two countries in the world without a statutory national paid maternity leave policy, and one of the only high-income countries that…

Ichino and Moretti (2009) find that menstruation may contribute to gender gaps in absenteeism and earnings, based on evidence that absences of young female Italian bank employees follow a 28-day cycle. We find this evidence is not robust to the correction of coding errors or small changes in specification, and we find no evidence of increased…

Findings of a study that formulated and tested new ways of thinking about teacher absence are presented in this paper, which is based on the premise that teacher absenteeism is a social invention that must be studied within the context of the work site and understood as a function of the social exchange that occurs therein. Prior research has used…

A survey of an upstate New York (East Lake) elementary school's teachers revealed that age and leave accumulation were the only factors related to absenteeism. Outside demands on teachers' time may explain the age factor. Teachers near retirement and those with more accumulated leave had significantly lower absenteeism. Incentive plans are…

This report examined the extent to which student attendance, teacher certification, and teacher absence explained differences in reading and mathematics achievement among elementary and middle schools in New York City (beyond that explained by such student demographics as receiving free lunch, being an English language learner, and receiving…