In case you have missed every study and article written on the subject: Paid leave improves gender equality in both the professional and personal spheres, improves the health and well-being of parents and children alike, and is, in the long-run, beneficial to employers. Perhaps this is why it is guaranteed by almost every country in the world, the exceptions being Papua New Guinea, Suriname, Tonga, and also the United States.
This is often justified by the claim that implementing mandatory paid leave will put a heavy burden on small businesses. In the short term, and from a strictly pecuniary perspective, offering paid leave is simply more expensive than not having it. Though the costs of offering paid leave are often a bit overstated (the direct cost of paid leave need not be paid solely by employer contribution; the program also offers indirect savings by boosting worker retention and lowering the cost of finding and training new workers), the fact that they usually come up front is particularly costly for start-ups, which are less financially stable and may find it difficult to compete with larger companies that can afford to provide paid leave.
[For more of this story, written by Daniel Burt, go to https://psmag.com/could-paid-p...d8d02e0d8#.8zbvpodus]
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