Paid Family Leave and State Disability Insurance are supposed to prevent low-income Californians from falling into poverty or homelessness when they need to take time off work.
But the program is largely an empty promise for these patients because the benefits replace only 60 percent of income. Two of my patients are among the many Californians caught in this trap.
California’s landmark paid family leave benefit has helped low-wage workers manage time off work to care for a newborn or a seriously ill family member but has not been an unreasonable burden on the state’s employers, according to new research on the six-year-old program. The research, based largely on surveys of employees and employers, found that the family leave program is popular with people who have used it but is still largely unknown and underused among the people who might need it most.