Abstract
In 2012, Connecticut became the first state to enact paid sick leave legislation. Using a difference-in-differences framework, we find the law had modest but negative effects on the labour market, particularly on the likelihood of working in the past week.
Notes
1 Other studies of changes in mandated sick leave benefits in Germany show that employees may use more generous benefits as a means to shirk work. See Ziebarth and Karlsson (Citation2010) and Ziebarth and Karlsson (Citation2014).
4 We also estimate our models with an alternate control: New York and New Jersey. Results are qualitatively similar to results with New England states. See Supplementary Tables 1 and 2 at sites.google.com/site/tomsyahn/
5 This follows Bollinger and Hirsch (Citation2006).
6 The ACS contains annual measures of work, but we cannot use them in the analysis because the answers mostly pertain to the period before the sick leave law.
7 If we include state and year fixed effects, state-year trends, individual demographic characteristics, and the state minimum wage, results become statistically insignificant. See Supplementary Table 3.
8 See supplementary material for a simple theory model.
9 See Supplementary Table 4 for complete results.