SYKEFRAVÆR-Forskn.om årsaker til sykefrav

The project aims at examining the driving forces behind absenteeism and health-related temporary and permanent exits from the labour market. The project is primarily empirical, with an emphasis on quasi-experimental evaluation techniques. It exploits merg ed administrative register data that have been developed at the Frisch Centre over the past few years, covering all individuals in Norway from 2001 and onwards. The data facilitate decomposition of participation and sickness absence in factors related to individuals, panel-doctors, firms, regions, cyclical developments etc. The project also initiates collection of more detailed personnel data from a few large companies, aimed at examining the impact of, e.g., local work organisation and individual employm ent conditions (job security, work-hours, shift-plans etc.). A number of topics will be examined during the project, such as i) the impact of sickness absence certification regulations, ii) the short and long term consequences of establishing "activity" as the "default option" for long term absence spells, iii) the sorting and the behavioural impacts of cyclical fluctuations, iv) the degree of sickness insurance exploitation among firms with temporarily redundant labour, v) the trade-off between employer -responsibility for existing employees and the employability of individuals with poor health, vi) individual costs of sickness absence and moral hazard problems, and vii) the impact of early treatment interventions in absence spells. For policy evaluatio n purposes, the project adopts a more structural approach, where individual choices are modelled explicitly, based on a realistic description of the constraints they face. The project is hosted by The Ragnar Frisch Centre for Economic Research, and resea rchers at this Centre will play a central role in its implementation. The project also includes highly qualified and experienced participants from Sweden (IFAU) and the Netherlands (Free University of Amsterda