Motherhood and parental leave interrupt employment relationships, likely imposing costs on firms. We document that mothers who are difficult to replace internally take shorter leave and that their firms hire replacements more often. Introducing more generous parental leave benefits erases the...

Despite the relatively uncontested importance of promoting school attendance in the policy arena, little evidence exists on the causal effect of school absence on long-run socio-economic outcomes. We address this question by combining historical and administrative records for cohorts of Swedish...

Despite efforts to integrate refugee children into host country education systems, their low school attachment remains a major policy challenge. Teachers play a key role in keeping students attached to school, yet classroom diversity poses difficulties for teachers who are not always adequately...

This paper provides the first analysis of a population-wide controlled field experiment for home visits checking on sick leave in the public sector. The experiment was carried out in Italy, a country with large absenteeism in the public sector, and it concerned the universe of public employees....

We designed and fielded a survey of New York and Pennsylvania firms to study the impacts of New York's 2018 Paid Family Leave policy on employer outcomes. We match each NY firm to a comparable PA firm and use difference-in-difference models to analyze within-match-pair changes in outcomes. We...

Using information on collective agreements and administrative data on mental ill-health, sickness absence, and job separations, we study the effect of decentralization on well-being at work in Finland. Our regression results with individual-and firm-level fixed effects show that decentralized...

This paper examines the widespread perception in India that the country has an acute teacher shortage of about one million teachers in public elementary schools, a view repeated in India's National Education Policy 2020. Using official DISE data, we show that there is hardly any net teacher...

Uruguay has increased it preschool enrollment, reaching almost universal coverage among four- and five-year-olds. However, more than a third of children enrolled in preschool programs have insufficient attendance, with absenteeism higher in schools in lower socioeconomic areas and among younger...

We investigate the impact on work absence of a massive reduction in paid sick leave benefits. We exploit a policy change that only affected public sector workers in Spain and compare changes in the number and length of spells they take relative to unaffected private sector workers. Our results...

Following the arrival of the first child, women's absence rates soar and become less predictable due to the greater frequency of their own sickness and the need to care for sick children. In this paper, we argue that this fall in presenteeism in the workplace hurts women's wages, not only...

This paper analyses the causal effects of weaker dismissal protection on the incidence of long-term sickness ( six weeks). We exploit a German policy change, which shifted the threshold exempting small establishments from dismissal protection from five to ten workers. Using administrative data,...

We investigate the impact on work absence of a massive reduction in paid sick leave benefits. We exploit a policy change that only affected public sector workers in Spain and compare changes in the number and length of spells they take relative to unaffected private sector workers. Our results...

This paper makes use of the randomized allocation of workers on sick leave in Denmark into self-management support, to examine the role of beliefs about control for prolonged absenteeism due to illness. Our results demonstrate that the ability of the intervention to lead sick-listed workers...

Public sector employees are often said to have excessive rates of absence from work. Using representative survey data for Germany, we indeed find absenteeism of employees to be higher in the public than the private sector. The differences in the incidence and days of absence showing up in...

Repräsentative Erwerbstätigenbefragungen zeigen, dass die Mehrheit der Beschäftigten mindestens einmal während der letzten zwölf Monate zur Arbeit gegangen ist, obwohl sie sich aufgrund ihres Gesundheitszustands besser hätten krankmelden sollen. Es bleiben aber auch viele Arbeitnehmer...

Public sector employees are often said to have excessive rates of absence from work. Using representative survey data for Germany, we indeed find absenteeism of employees to be higher in the public than the private sector. The differences in the incidence and days of absence showing up in...

We conducted a randomised controlled trial (RCT) on a sample of 1,000 female garment workers in three factories in Bangladesh, off ering access to free sanitary pads at work to 500 of the workers. We cross-randomised participation in information sessions for hygienic menstrual health care...

We estimate sickness absences on Mondays and Fridays which fall between a weekend and public holidays, so called "bridging days". Many public holidays change their day of the week over the years. We find that sickness absences are considerably lower on bridging days than on regular Mondays and...

We estimate sickness absences on Mondays and Fridays which fall between a weekend and public holidays, so called "bridging days". Many public holidays change their day of the week over the years. We find that sickness absences are considerably lower on bridging days than on regular Mondays and...

We investigate the impact of sickness absenteeism on productivity by using rich longitudinal matched employer-employee data on Belgian private firms. We deal with endogeneity, which arises from unobserved firm heterogeneity and reverse causality, by applying a modified version of the Ackerberg...

This paper analyzes the relationship between commuting time and sick-day absence of US workers. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics for the years 2011, 2013, and 2015, we find that a 1% increase in the daily commute of male workers is associated with an increase of around 0.018%...

Do workplace programs help reduce worker sickness absence? Many programs are based on the principle that the employee’s decision to report an absence can be influenced if it is costly to be absent. Firms can reduce absenteeism by implementing broad programs, including performance pay, general...

This study tests for forward-looking moral hazard in the social insurance system by exploiting a 1991 reform in Sweden. The replacement rate was reduced for short absences but not for long absences, which introduced a potential future cost of returning to work. Using this exogenous variation in...

This study investigates systematically and simultaneously a wide range of influences on workplace productivity loss. Workplace productivity has been widely discussed in literature for many years, yet most of the existing studies focus on a narrow pathway of effects; this can potentially result...

We study employee absence in Danish organizations. In contrast to Steers and Rhodes (1978), who stress the importance of individual and organizational characteristics in shaping employees' motivation to attend work, we show that absence is predominantly an individualized phenomenon. Because the...

Student attendance is both a critical input and intermediate output of the education production function. However, the malleable classroom-level determinants of student attendance are poorly understood. We estimate the causal effect of class size and observable teacher qualifications on student...

Credible evidence from a variety of contexts suggests that student absences harm academic achievement. However, extant studies focus entirely on the average effects of student absences, and how those average effects vary by student, school, and absence type. This paper enhances our understanding...

We analyse labour supply and absence from work choices, assuming that individual preferences exhibit relative consumption concerns. We show that contractual hours and the length of absence periods may vary equally with the strength of positional considerations. In this case, positional concerns...