State Paid Sick Leave Mandates and Receipt of Pediatric Preventive Dental Care

Biannual preventive dental visits are recommended to promote good oral health and identify problems, yet children in many families do not receive this care due to time-related barriers. Paid sick leave mandates have the potential to relieve parental time constraints and facilitate scheduling and attending pediatric dental visits; thus, we sought to evaluate the effects of state paid sick leave mandates on children's receipt of preventive dental care.

Using 2016 to 2023 National Survey of Children's Health data and a difference-in-differences approach, we compared trends in children's receipt of preventive dental care in states that did and did not implement paid sick leave mandates.

Pre-implementation of paid sick leave mandates, children residing in states that later implemented these policies were more likely to have received preventive dental care, to be non-Hispanic white, to have private health insurance, and to have parents with more than a high school education, relative to children residing in states that never implemented paid sick leave mandates. State paid sick leave mandates were associated with a 3.2% relative increase (95% CI: 0.2%, 6.2%) in rates of children receiving preventive dental care, controlling for time-varying demographic and policy characteristics, with state and year fixed effects.

State-paid sick leave mandates may alleviate competing parental work and caregiving responsibilities and provide parents with additional time and flexibility to obtain dental care for their children.