IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp9771.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Does Activating Sick-Listed Workers Work? Evidence from a Randomized Experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Rehwald, Kai

    (Aarhus University)

  • Rosholm, Michael

    (Aarhus University)

  • Rouland, Benedicte

    (University of Nantes)

Abstract

Using data from a large-scale randomized controlled trial conducted in Danish job centers, this paper investigates the effects of an intensification of mandatory return-to-work activities on the subsequent labor market outcomes for sick-listed workers. Using variations in local treatment strategies, both between job centers and between randomly assigned treatment and control groups within a given job center, we compare the relative effectiveness of alternative interventions. Our results show that the use of partial sick leave increases the length of time spent in regular employment and non-reliance on benefits, and also reduces the time spent in unemployment. Traditional active labor market programs and the use of paramedical care appear to have no effect at all, or even an adverse effect.

Suggested Citation

  • Rehwald, Kai & Rosholm, Michael & Rouland, Benedicte, 2016. "Does Activating Sick-Listed Workers Work? Evidence from a Randomized Experiment," IZA Discussion Papers 9771, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9771
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp9771.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Høgelund, Jan & Holm, Anders & McIntosh, James, 2010. "Does graded return-to-work improve sick-listed workers' chance of returning to regular working hours?," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 29(1), pages 158-169, January.
    2. David Card & Jochen Kluve & Andrea Weber, 2010. "Active Labour Market Policy Evaluations: A Meta-Analysis," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 120(548), pages 452-477, November.
    3. Simen Markussen, 2012. "The individual cost of sick leave," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 25(4), pages 1287-1306, October.
    4. T. Everhardt & Ph. Jong, 2011. "Return to Work After Long Term Sickness," De Economist, Springer, vol. 159(3), pages 361-380, September.
    5. Imbens, Guido W & Angrist, Joshua D, 1994. "Identification and Estimation of Local Average Treatment Effects," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 62(2), pages 467-475, March.
    6. Markussen, Simen & Mykletun, Arnstein & Røed, Knut, 2012. "The case for presenteeism — Evidence from Norway's sickness insurance program," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 96(11), pages 959-972.
    7. Per Engström & Pathric Hägglund & Per Johansson, 2017. "Early Interventions and Disability Insurance: Experience from a Field Experiment," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 127(600), pages 363-392, March.
    8. Hesselius, Patrik, 2007. "Does sickness absence increase the risk of unemployment?," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 288-310, April.
    9. Andrén, Daniela & Svensson, Mikael, 2009. "Part-time sick leave as a treatment method for individuals with musculoskeletal disorders," Working Papers 2009:11, Örebro University, School of Business.
    10. Markus Frölich & Almas Heshmati & Michael Lechner, 2004. "A microeconometric evaluation of rehabilitation of long-term sickness in Sweden," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(3), pages 375-396.
    11. Markussen, Simen & Røed, Knut, 2014. "The impacts of vocational rehabilitation," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 1-13.
    12. Aakvik, Arild & Heckman, James J. & Vytlacil, Edward J., 2005. "Estimating treatment effects for discrete outcomes when responses to treatment vary: an application to Norwegian vocational rehabilitation programs," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 125(1-2), pages 15-51.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Holm, Anders & Høgelund, Jan & Gørtz, Mette & Rasmussen, Kristin Storck & Houlberg, Helle Sofie Bøje, 2017. "Employment effects of active labor market programs for sick-listed workers," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 33-44.
    2. Kools, Lieke & Koning, Pierre, 2019. "Graded return-to-work as a stepping stone to full work resumption," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 189-209.
    3. Marjolijn De Wilde & Sarah Marchal, 2018. "Weighing up work willingness in social assistance: a balancing act on multiple levels," Working Papers 1808, Herman Deleeck Centre for Social Policy, University of Antwerp.
    4. De Graaf-Zijl, Marloes & Spijkerman, Marcel & Zwinkels, Wim, 2020. "Long-Term Effects of Individual Placement and Support Services for Disability Benefits Recipients with Severe Mental Illnesses," IZA Discussion Papers 13772, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rehwald, Kai & Rosholm, Michael & Rouland, Bénédicte, 2018. "Labour market effects of activating sick-listed workers," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 15-32.
    2. Kools, Lieke & Koning, Pierre, 2019. "Graded return-to-work as a stepping stone to full work resumption," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 189-209.
    3. Hernæs, Øystein, 2018. "Activation against absenteeism – Evidence from a sickness insurance reform in Norway," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 62(C), pages 60-68.
    4. Hagen, Tobias, 2016. "Econometric evaluation of a placement coaching program for recipients of disability insurance benefits in Switzerland," Working Paper Series 10, Frankfurt University of Applied Sciences, Faculty of Business and Law.
    5. Simen Markussen & Knut Røed, 2016. "Leaving Poverty Behind? The Effects of Generous Income Support Paired with Activation," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 8(1), pages 180-211, February.
    6. Hagen, Tobias, 2016. "Econometric Evaluation of a Placement Coaching Program for Recipients of Disability Insurance Benefits in Switzerland," VfS Annual Conference 2016 (Augsburg): Demographic Change 145736, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    7. Røed, Knut, 2012. "Active Unemployment Insurance," IZA Policy Papers 41, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Michelle Yin & Garima Siwach & Dajun Lin, 2023. "Vocational Rehabilitation Services and Labor Market Outcomes for Transition‐Age Youth with Disabilities in Maine," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 42(1), pages 166-197, January.
    9. Alexander Ahammer, 2018. "Physicians, sick leave certificates, and patients' subsequent employment outcomes," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(6), pages 923-936, June.
    10. Alexander Ahammer, 2016. "How Physicians Affect Patients’ Employment Outcomes Through Deciding on Sick Leave Durations," Economics working papers 2016-05, Department of Economics, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    11. Rainer Eppel, 2017. "The Effects of a Job-Creation Scheme: Evidence from Regional Variation in Program Capacities," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 56(1), pages 161-190, January.
    12. Markussen, Simen & Røed, Knut, 2014. "The impacts of vocational rehabilitation," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 31(C), pages 1-13.
    13. Knut Røed, 2012. "Active social insurance," IZA Journal of Labor Policy, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 1(1), pages 1-22, December.
    14. Holm, Anders & Høgelund, Jan & Gørtz, Mette & Rasmussen, Kristin Storck & Houlberg, Helle Sofie Bøje, 2017. "Employment effects of active labor market programs for sick-listed workers," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 52(C), pages 33-44.
    15. María laura Alzúa & Guillermo Cruces & Carolina Lopez, 2016. "Long-Run Effects Of Youth Training Programs: Experimental Evidence From Argentina," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 54(4), pages 1839-1859, October.
    16. Thomas Barnay, 2016. "Health, work and working conditions: a review of the European economic literature," The European Journal of Health Economics, Springer;Deutsche Gesellschaft für Gesundheitsökonomie (DGGÖ), vol. 17(6), pages 693-709, July.
    17. Olivier De Groote & Koen Declercq, 2021. "Tracking and specialization of high schools: Heterogeneous effects of school choice," Journal of Applied Econometrics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 36(7), pages 898-916, November.
    18. Bruno Crépon & Esther Duflo & Marc Gurgand & Roland Rathelot & Philippe Zamora, 2013. "Do Labor Market Policies have Displacement Effects? Evidence from a Clustered Randomized Experiment," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 128(2), pages 531-580.
    19. Pichler, Stefan & Ziebarth, Nicolas R., 2015. "The Pros and Cons of Sick Pay Schemes: A Method to Test for Contagious Presenteeism and Shirking Behavior," VfS Annual Conference 2015 (Muenster): Economic Development - Theory and Policy 112940, Verein für Socialpolitik / German Economic Association.
    20. Pons Rotger, Gabriel & Rosholm, Michael, 2020. "The Role of Beliefs in Long Sickness Absence: Experimental Evidence from a Psychological Intervention," IZA Discussion Papers 13582, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    long-term sickness; vocational rehabilitation; treatment effects; randomized controlled trial;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J68 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - Public Policy
    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp9771. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.