This paper aims to estimate the causal effect of sick leave on subsequent earnings and employment, using an administrative dataset for Norway. To obtain experiment-like variation in sick leave among otherwise similar workers, the leniency of these workers' physicians-certifying sickness absences-is used as an instrumental variable for sick leave. A 1 percentage point increase in a worker's sick leave rate is found to reduce his earnings by 1. 2% 2 years later. Around half of the reduction in earnings can be explained by a reduction of 0. 5 percentage points in the probability of being employed. © 2011 Springer-Verlag.
CITATION STYLE
Markussen, S. (2012). The individual cost of sick leave. Journal of Population Economics, 25(4), 1287–1306. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00148-011-0390-8
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