Impact of health conditions on absenteeism from work

A Work Project, presented as part of the requirements for the Award of a Masters Degree in Economics from the NOVA – School of Business and Economics

Every year many workers fail to turn up to work due to health problems or disability. The loss of working days affects negatively individuals’ wellbeing, employers, and society in general. If on the one hand employers feel that they support most of the costs while workers are absent due to illness, on the other hand disabled employees face discrimination in labor market as employers believe that they are more likely to be absent from work. Using data from the 2005/2006 Portuguese National Health Survey, the goal of this work project is to investigate the role of health conditions on absence days reported by workers. The results, obtained from a probit model, confirm what has been found in economic literature for other countries. Disability has a positive impact on probability of absenteeism. However, in Portugal this effect is small; it amounts to a marginal increase of at most 1 day in a year.