A study by the Rand Corp. to be published in the September 3 edition of the Journal of the American Medical Association says only 18 percent were aware that the paid-family-leave law existed. Five percent have taken time off.

“I was surprised at how low of a percentage of people had heard of the law, let alone used it,” said Mark Schuster, one of the authors of the Rand study and chief of general pediatrics at Children’s Hospital in Boston. “This is an automatic payroll deduction, they’ve paid into this pool of funds the state maintains and they are not even aware of it to file their claim and to get the benefit.”

The authors of the study surveyed parents of chronically ill children, a group believed to be the most likely to use the long-term leave benefit. The California Paid Family Leave Program, the first of its kind in the nation, provides paid leave to workers who must care for an ill family member.

According to the state Employment Development Department, which administers the program, the number of claims filed and paid—and the amount of time people have taken time off work—has increased each year since the program went into effect.

In 2004, the department received 150,000 claims and paid nearly 140,000 of them totaling $300 million, or $409 to each beneficiary each week. Last year, nearly $439 million in benefits were paid to 182,000 people out of 192,000 people who applied.

Before the legislation passed in 2002, employers argued it would kill jobs and be cumbersome to administer. They cast it as a more costly version of the federal Family and Medical Leave Act, which protects people’s jobs but does not guarantee any income.

Cynthia Leon, legislative director for human resources issues at the California Manufacturers & Technology Association, a business group that originally opposed the legislation, said that mandated paid leave—regardless of whether it is widely used—limits the flexibility companies to balance the needs of workers with the needs of a employers.

“We’re already facing a workforce shortage,” she said. “It’s in our best interest to keep the workforce happy.”

The study showed that parents are concerned, as they were before the law’s passage, that taking leave would cost them their income or their job or damage their careers.

The law, which pays 55 percent of a person’s salary up to a cap after a person has missed a week of work, was also intended to provide time for parents to bond with newborn or newly adopted children, said Jennifer Richard, a spokeswoman for California state Sen. Sheila Kuehl, who sponsored the legislation.

The leave is paid for by employees, whose paychecks are deducted by about a dollar a week. Unlike FMLA, employers are not required to post notices alerting employees to the availability of the benefit—one reason the program has not been widely used, researchers say.

The Employment Development Department’s $1 million advertising budget has dried up, said spokeswoman Loree Levy, and no new money is forthcoming. The agency is targeting advocacy organizations to help spread word of the program to potential beneficiaries.

—Jeremy Smerd

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