The American Action Forum (@AAF) and the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) today released a proposal for a federal paid parental leave program that is targeted to low-income families. The AAF-AEI proposal would provide paid parental leave for the birth or adoption of a new child.

The income-tested paid parental leave program would have the following impacts:
• 57.1 million low- and middle-income workers, almost 40 percent of civilian employment, would gain access to 12 weeks of job-protected, paid parental leave;
• Each participating household would receive $343.34 per week on average;
• The federal government would spend approximately $4.3 billion annually on the program’s benefits, assuming that each year 2 million covered workers would have a new child; and
• All benefits would go to workers in households under 325 percent of the federal poverty threshold (approximately $62,000 per year for a family of three).

This proposal follows up on AAF’s proposed Earned Income Leave Benefit (EILB), a highly targeted program that would provide paid parental, family, and medical leave to workers in low-income households.

Click here to read the proposal.