For 20 years, we have heard all about the business case for offering workers maternity leaves, flexible schedules, and other benefits. But those discussions virtually always focus on the business benefits of keeping high-human capital workers – managers and professionals. The Project on Attorney Retention (PAR), for example, has made headway with employers by publicizing estimates that losing a second-year associate costs law firms in excess of $200,000.

Much less work has been done on how offering family-friendly benefits helps the bottom line of businesses that employ low-wage workers. So I want to make sure that people notice the story on the front page of The New York Times Sunday Business section. Attracted by the picture of Mick Jaggar on the cover, I noticed a story about Steven T. Bigari, who runs a string of McDonald’s franchises in Colorado Springs and spends a lot of time thinking about how to make life easier for his employees.

He’s hemmed in.

Competitive pressures from Taco Bell and other fast food franchises and overhead costs such as loan payments and licensing fees create intense pressures to save costs. While – long ago – his first instinct was to respond by eliminating workers’ paid vacations, he discovered another way to cut costs: help his workers cope with the pressures that prevent them from coming to work and help them respond to the realities of their lives. He cut attrition very sharply, increased employee loyalty sharply, and saw his profit margin rise by 3 percent.

He worked with a local church to set up day care – Jody Heymann’s team has documented that one-third of workers in a given week have to miss work for reasons related to family care, and Randy Albelda has shown that low-wage workers are more likely to rely on family members for child care, which is more likely to break down than more formal care. In the arbitrations WorkLife Law studies, I think of the single father of four who was fired when his mother failed to show up to care for his kids.

Bigari also began to sneak out at lunch hours to buy cheap cars at auction. Our study of arbitrations also showed that many workers are disciplined or fired when their cars don’t start, or when taxis never show up. It’s not that they are irresponsible – it’s just that life as a low-wage worker entails day-to-day challenges in getting to work that most of those reading this blog never consider.

Bigari also offers no-interest loans to help workers avoid crises such as a threatened eviction. This makes me recall how, when I was poll-watching in Ohio during the last election, I was struck by the fact that people in the low-income neighborhood called out to each other “How’s it going? Where are you staying?” Staying? The mismatch between low wages and high rents makes many conscientious workers transient. Have you ever missed a day when moving house? Have you ever been fired for it?

Here is the core of the business case for family friendly benefits for low-wage workers. Economists often miss it. In the same section of the paper is an apologetic article self-consciously trying to counter the argument that most economists worry that raising the minimum wage will decrease jobs for low-wage workers. The economists don’t take account of the fact that raising wages will make it less likely that workers will get evicted, more likely they will be able to pay for adequate child care, more able to live in neighborhoods where they don’t have to worry so much about leaving 8-year-olds home alone because they are at work. Economists’ tunnel vision is so selective about which costs it chooses to recognize. They too often take as a given that many of the “costs of doing business” – like the 300% attrition rates in fast-food – are not fixed costs: they are costs of doing business in a society without the kinds of family supports they need to function day to day. Talk about freakonomics.