Paid family leave bill approved by Senate committee

California became the first state in the nation to offer parents paid family leave in 2004 but many low-income families still can’t afford to take the essential time off. That’s because you often get only 60% of your pay, which falls well below the poverty line for many.  

Helping these needy families is the idea behind Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez’s Assembly Bill 123, which would raise the amount of the weekly benefit. The bill, which would guarantee 90 percent of income, was approved Thursday by California’s Senate Appropriations Committee. It will next go to the full Senate.

This reform was among the core issues in the Master Plan for Early Learning and Care because experts agree that the early days of life are vital to child development. Paid family leave has a variety of benefits, from helping reduce maternal stress and infant hospitalization rates to increasing breastfeeding, research shows.