Starting January 1, 2018, new parents in New York will have something to celebrate: paid parental leave.

New York joins California, New Jersey, and Rhode Island as the latest state to mandate paid leave. That said, at 12 weeks paid time off, New York's leave is the most generous in the country, doubling the time California and New Jersey offers, and tripling that of Rhode Island's paid leave. Washington also passed a family leave measure in 2007, but has yet to implement it. (Should Washington D.C. put in place its proposed family leave plan, it will take the top spot from New York with 16 weeks of paid leave.)

Only 12 percent of American employees currently have access to paid family leave through their employers, and its distribution is anything but even. According to Vox, 5 percent of workers in the lowest-paid 25 percent of the workforce have it, while 22 percent of the top 10 percent of earners do.