California's Paid Family Leave Law Improves Maternal Psychological Health

We studied the effect of California's first in the nation paid family leave policy on maternal postpartum psychological distress for women overall and for disadvantaged groups and found:

• Access to paid family leave improved mental health symptoms among new mothers.

• Access to paid family leave decreased likelihood of mild psychological distress.

• Single mothers and younger mothers had the largest mental health improvements.

Paid family leave was associated with improved mental health for California mothers, suggesting that expansions of state or federal paid family leave policies have the potential to improve maternal postpartum health.