The Gendered Effects of Unemployment Insurance Modernization Provisions on Benefit Receipt Among Unemployed Workers with Children

Background and Purpose

Many American works have to quit their jobs or are laid off for reasons related to family caregiving. Female workers, compared to their male counterparts, are more likely to leave their jobs for family caregiving reasons and experience economic insecurity due to employment interruptions. However, female workers are less likely to receive unemployment benefit. Unemployment Insurance (UI) has played a critical role in providing income support for unemployed workers since 1935. In an attempt to keep pace with changes in the economy and the workforce over the past few decades, Congress passed the Unemployment Insurance Modernization Act (UIMA) in 2009 to expand eligibility rules. Reform provisions include implementing alternative base periods (ABPs) that relax the work history requirements, accepting compelling family reasons (CFRs) for leaving jobs, and adopting part-time provisions that allow UI claimants seeking part-time work (PTW). The variation in UIM adoption at different times across states serves as a natural experiment to test the effects of UIM provisions.

While previous research has suggested that the UIM provisions improve the UI accessibility and eligibility for workers (Bleemer, 2013; Callan, Lindner, & Nichols, 2015), these studies did not analyze the gendered effects UIM provisions on individual benefit receipt among unemployed workers with children. This research aims to address two questions: (1) Did the UIM provisions increase UI receipt among unemployed workers with children? (2) Did the policy effects differ by gender?

Methods

I use the Censes 2008 Survey of Income and Program Participation (SIPP) and merge it with state UI policy information to perform difference-in-differences (DD) to test the UIM effects on benefit receipt. I restrict the sample to unemployed workers who lived with children during the survey period (N=131,137). To examine the gendered effects of UIM provisions, I test the final DD model for two samples stratified by gender. I also explore alternative model specifications to test gendered policy effects and account for the complex structure in the panel and multilevel data (e.g., Difference-in-difference-in-differences (DDD) and mixed effects modeling).

Results

Preliminary results show that all the three UIM provisions did not significantly increase the probability of receiving UI among unemployed workers with children during the 2008-2013 period. However, the three provisions reveal different patterns of gendered effects on UI receipt: the ABP provision significantly increases gender difference in UI receipt by 2.4 percentage points, the PTW provision significantly decreases gender difference in UI receipt by 3.1 percentage points, and the CFR provision has no gendered effect, controlling for individual-level and state-level covariates.

Conclusion and Implications

The results suggest that male unemployed workers with children benefit more from the alternative base period provision, while female unemployed workers with children benefit more from the part-time provision. The impact of UIM on benefit receipt would have been larger if all states implemented all UIM provisions. Findings will inform future reforms that accommodate for the work-family conflict and improve the gender equity of the UI system.