Dependent Children and Women's Sickness Absence in the EU Countries and Norway

ABSTRACT

Previous research has yielded quite varying results with regard to the relationship between children and women's sickness absence from work. This study examines the issue using data from the EU Labour Surveys. Cross-sectional data from 2005 covering 23 EU countries plus Norway are used. The data are analysed by means of logistic regression with control for country, age, working hours and socio-economic status. For married/cohabiting women, there is a quite consistent tendency for dependent children to be associated with lower sickness absence. A single young child is, however, related to higher sickness absence in some analyses, suggesting that the transition to parenthood may be stressful. Single mothers do not in general have higher sickness absence than their married/cohabiting counterparts. The tendency toward lower sickness absence in most groups of married/cohabiting mothers is likely to be due to selection to some extent, but also to favourable role accumulation effects.

Key words:

• sickness absence
• absenteeism
• women
• children
• double burden

Acknowledgements

This research is part of the project ‘Friends or foes? Understanding the role of firms and workplaces for worker health’, which is supported by the Research Council of Norway (Project no. 410.078).

Notes

^1. I am grateful to Eurostat and to the original collecting agencies for access to these data. Responsibility for the analyses and interpretations rests entirely with the author.

^2. Occupation is given in the data as three digit ISCO codes. These have been translated into ISEI scores using the coding scheme developed by GESIS – Leibniz-Institute for the Social Sciences. See http://www.gesis.org/Dauerbeobachtung/GML/Service/Mikrodaten-Tools/isei/isco_isei.pdf.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Arne Mastekaasa

Arne Mastekaasa is Professor of Sociology at the University of Oslo, Norway. Major research fields are social inequality, social mobility and labour markets.