Working Paper Series,
IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy

Abstract: Women are on average more absent from work for health reasons than men. At the same time, they live longer. This conflicting pattern suggests that part of the gender difference in health-related absenteeism arises from differences between the genders unrelated to actual health. An overlooked explanation could be that men an women's preferences for absenteeism differ, for example because of gender differences in risk preferences. These differences may originate from the utility-maximizing of households in which women's traditional dual roles influence household decisions to invest primarily in women's health. Using detailed administrative data on sick leave, hospital visits and objective health measures we first investigate the existence of gender-specific preferences for abstenteeism and subsequently test for the household investment hypothesis. We find evidence for the existence of gender differences in preferences for absence from work, and that a non-trivial part of these preference differences can be attributed to household investments in women's health.

Keywords: Sickness absence; gender norms; health investments

JEL-codes: D13; I13; J22

59 pages, May 28, 2013

Full text files

wp2013-13-Gender-dif...sences-from-work.pdf  

Download statistics

Published as

Daniel Avdic and Per Johansson, (2017), 'Absenteeism, Gender and the Morbidity–Mortality Paradox', Journal of Applied Econometrics, vol 32, no 2, pages 440-462

• IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy
• Ordering Working Papers
• Home page for this series

Questions (including download problems) about the papers in this series should be directed to Ali Ghooloo ()
Report other problems with accessing this service to Sune Karlsson ().

RePEc:hhs:ifauwp:2013_013This page generated on 2024-09-13 22:15:20.