More Families Have Access to Paid Sick Leave for Health Care Needs but Disparities Remain

An article, “Parental Access to Paid Sick Leave: 2010-2024,” documented gains in children’s access to family-level paid sick leave over the period studied but found those gains were not equally experienced across all children. The article, published in the February 2026 Pediatrics (published online Jan. 6), found that more than 3 out of 4 families had experienced gains in access to paid sick leave, defined as financially protected time away from work that employees can use to attend to health needs. The authors examined data from 2010 to 2024 provided by the National Health Interview Survey, an annual cross-sectional survey of roughly 100,000 people and 45,000 households. In 2024, nearly 79.6% of children residing in families with at least one parent who worked full-time had family-level access to paid sick leave, up from 59% in 2010. Only 37.2% of families with parents that worked part-time had access to paid sick leave in 2024, up from 30.4%. Unlike most developed countries, the United States does not have a federal paid sick leave policy, so access to benefits among U.S. employees is left to the discretion of states, local jurisdictions, or employers. Increasingly, states and localities have adopted paid sick leave mandates. However, children from lower income families and those without insurance or with public insurance were far less likely to have family-level access to paid sick leave than children with private insurance. In addition, Hispanic children had the lowest rates of family-level access to paid sick leave all years; the percentage of children in this group with access in 2010 and 2024 was 41.5% and 63.1%, respectively. 

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The American Academy of Pediatrics is an organization of 67,000 primary care pediatricians, pediatric medical subspecialists and pediatric surgical specialists dedicated to the health, safety and well-being of infants, children, adolescents and young adults.