Update on Research for Equitable Growth’s Issue Brief “A Regional Look at Single Moms and Upward Mobility”

About a month ago, I put out a short piece assessing the attention given to the relationship between the share of single mothers in an area and economic mobility. As part of the piece, I noted that many places had high economic mobility despite having a high share of single mothers and that these places tended to have had parental leave laws prior to the Family Medical Leave Act of 1993. Richard Reeves and Joanna Venator of Brookings objected to my analysis noting that some places, such as New Jersey, have low mobility despite having long standing family leave laws. In response, I have added a statistical appendix to the original piece showing that these pre-FMLA parental leave laws are statistically significant factors. You can also read my blog post over on the Brookings Social Mobility Memos blog responding to Reeves and Venator.