Overview

The Washington Center for Equitable Growth seeks to deepen our understanding of whether and how inequality affects economic growth and stability. We are currently requesting proposals on the issue of paid family and medical leave to advance the evidence on how paid leave affects engines of economic growth such as labor force participation, the development of human capital, consumption, and macroeconomic stability.

We support inquiry using many different kinds of evidence, relying on a variety of methodological approaches and cutting across academic disciplines. We also support data collection, measure development, and more foundational investigations into how employers and individuals interact with the paid leave system, as we see completing these research efforts as foundational first steps to connecting the dots between paid leave, inequality, and broadly shared economic growth.

Equitable Growth supports efforts to increase diversity in the social sciences. We recognize the importance of diverse perspectives in broadening and deepening the Center’s research on these topics of core interest.

We are currently requesting proposals in three core areas of interest: medical leave, caregiving leave, and employers and paid leave. Though parental leave to care for a new child is not a core interest, we will consider proposals that focus on parental leave and may fund exceptional work in this area that will advance the research and policy conversation.

For all research questions, we are interested in how outcomes vary across the earnings distribution and by demographic group, as well as by medical condition where relevant. For all causal inference studies, we are interested in how policy design elements including wage replacement rates, leave duration, intermittency of leave, determination processes, and especially job protection and the use of privatized insurance options affect the outcomes under study.