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Northern Europeans Call in Sick More Often
than Southern Ones
Workers in Central and Northern Europe miss work due to illness more often than their counterparts elsewhere in the European Union (EU), and men have higher rates of sickness absenteeism than women, according to a survey published in September in Occupational and Environmental Medicine.
Postdoctoral fellows David Gimeno, Ph.D., and his wife, Dritana Marko, M.D., review data from a study of sick leave.
Photo by Michele Mocco
Lead author David Gimeno, Ph.D., now a postdoctoral fellow at The University of Texas School of Public Health at Houston, examined employee absenteeism due to sickness as part of the Third European Survey on Working Conditions in 2000.
The rates of sickness absenteeism were calculated as the proportion of the total workforce taking at least one day off for health reasons in the preceding 12 months.
The average proportion of the EU workforce that missed work due to illness or injury was 14.5 percent, but this varied from a low of 6.7 percent in Greece to a high of 24 percent in Finland. Next highest were the Netherlands at 20.3 percent and Germany at 18.3 percent.
Across the EU, 15.5 percent of men took at least one day off sick compared with 13.3 percent of women.
"This paper is the first attempt to provide comparable sickness absence frequency data for each of 15 EU member countries participating in the Third European Survey on Working Conditions," Gimeno said. "Typically, differences in measures, sample design and data collection have made it difficult to establish appropriate between-country comparisons."
Reports on sickness absence are not only about national health care policy, Gimeno said, but also about national industrial and economic policy. "Surprisingly, there is no equivalent data or survey in the United States."
Gimeno's research at the Southwest Center for Occupational and Environmental Health in the School of Public Health is supported by funds from the Fogarty International Research Training Program in Occupational and Environmental Health.
The survey of 16,257 people was a random and representative sample of employees in each country. Gimeno conducted this research as part of his doctoral dissertation, which he completed in the Occupational Health Research Unit of the Universitat Pompeu Fabra in Barcelona, Spain.
Study collaborators were: Benjamin C. Amick, Ph.D., associate professor of health promotion and behavioral science in the UT School of Public Health; Fernando Benavides, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of occupational epidemiology, and Joan Benach, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of occupational health and of public health, both at the Universitat Pompeu Fabra.
By Scott Merville, Public Affairs