Sickness absence: An international comparison

This paper shows how internationally and intertemporally consistent information on sickness absence can be constructed from Labour Force Surveys, and describes some important features of data that we have generated using the Luxembourg Employment Study. We also analyse sickness absence rates by age, gender and other socio-economic characteristics of workers. These relationships prove to be similar across countries with widely differing mean rates of absence. In this dataset, workers with longer tenure tend to have higher absence rates even when age is controlled for. Absence is also positively correlated with higher usual hours of work.