Work-family policy in the United States and Germany: sub-federal and employer-provided policy

Keywords: occupational welfare
United States
employers
childcare
public policy
leave
flexible work
family policy

Research on family policy tends to focus on public and national-level family policy. Therefore, two additional and sometimes alternative sources of institutional support for work-family balance remain under-researched, namely sub-national and employer-provided family policy. This thesis consists of four articles that address questions left in the gaps of the literature on the two themes of sub-federal and employer-provided family policy. The first article addresses the first theme concerning sub-federal family policy in the United States. It investigates two questions: Whether varieties of liberalism exist across the 50 United States, and whether these varieties help explain differences in the economic security among households with children. The findings show that there are varieties of liberalism that help explain differences in households’ economic security, especially those of single-mother households. This article typologizes state-level public family policy packages, and associates these with family outcomes. Its theoretical contribution is to refine the concept of liberalism for sub-federal family policy in the United States, such that it relates to poverty outcomes and is simple to operationalize.
The remaining articles all address the theme of employer provided family policy. Each makes a distinct theoretical contribution, which engages the debate on whether economic or normative pressures are better able to explain employer family policy provision. The second article explores the relationship between public and employer-provided family policy for childcare and flexible work in the United States and Germany. Specifically, it investigates the relevance of female leadership and organized labor for employer policy. The theoretical contribution lies primarily in the framework, which integrates rational choice theory and neo-institutionalism to generate opposing empirical predictions and thereby distinguish whether economic or normative motivations better explain employer provision. This theoretical distinction is not commonly made, with many previous studies focusing solely on economic considerations, or on both normative and economic explanations without distinguishing the extent of their explanatory potential. Logistic regression analysis is employed to examine the association between each policy and female leadership and organized labor in each country. The findings suggest normative pressures explain crowding-in of employer childcare in Germany, while works councils are highly relevant to flexible working in Germany, and female leadership is highly relevant to employer provided childcare in the United States. While economic explanations for these associations are useful, caution is advised against relying solely on them. The study highlights the importance of considering both economic and normative motivations for employer provision of family policies.
The third and fourth papers both address both theses of sub-federal public and employer family policy. The third paper picks up an avenue for research suggested by the previous paper in the thesis. It compares the relationship between female leadership and employer-provided childcare at the sub-federal level across the 50 United States. The article questions the sufficiency of economic considerations to explain the role of female leaders for employer-provided childcare. The theoretical contribution is to suggest that in certain contexts in the sub-federal United States, normative pressures on employers can better explain empirical outcomes. Using logistic regression, the article examines two categories of employer childcare: flexible spending accounts (FSAs), which are a cost-effective policy provided for economic reasons, and most other forms of employer childcare (non-FSAs), which are less easily rationalized as cost-effective. Results show that non-FSA forms of employer childcare are more likely in states with generous public childcare, providing evidence of normative pressure. The prevalence of female leadership is also highly relevant for employer childcare, with female executives associated with both forms of childcare. The study suggests that a critical mass of female leaders can exert both economic and normative pressure on employers to provide childcare, highlighting the relevance of both normative and economic considerations to employer decisions.
The fourth paper examines how and why employers provide parenting leaves in the context of varying public leave policies. It challenges both the prevailing notion that economic pressure is the main driver of employer policy, as well as an emerging exception to this argument, that generous public policy can make normative considerations more important to employers. The paper offers a theoretical contribution by suggesting that the explanatory power of normative versus economic theories of employer provision is gendered: While employer-provided maternity leave in context of generous public policy is better explained by normative arguments, economic explanations better fit provision patterns of employer paternity leave. Using the National Study of Employers dataset, this case study of the United States finds that despite gender-neutral public policy, employers reintroduce gender unequal provision in their maternity and paternity leave policies. Across states where all public policies are gender-neutral, employer maternity policies are more likely when this provision is more generous, but paternity policies show no such pattern.