IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wly/hlthec/v29y2020i5p554-566.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Health effects of reduced workload for older employees

Author

Listed:
  • Espen Bratberg
  • Tor Helge Holmås
  • Karin Monstad

Abstract

To keep elder employees in the labour force, introducing age‐dependent job conditions can be a policy measure. However, we know little about the effect of such initiatives. We investigate the effects of a particular programme in Norway that reduces the workload of teachers at age 55 but maintains the same wage. Evaluation of this programme is well suited to a difference‐in‐difference analysis, where the control group is teachers slightly too young to be eligible for the workload reduction. Using full population register data for the period 2006–2013, we analyse the effects of the programme on health as indicated by sickness absence and health care utilization. We find that whereas there is no effect among women, the workload reduction causes a decrease in sickness absence and an improvement in mental health among males. These results, which are robust to a placebo test, to extending the pretreatment period, and to dropping single birth cohorts, are driven by a subgroup of men whose prior health status is poor.

Suggested Citation

  • Espen Bratberg & Tor Helge Holmås & Karin Monstad, 2020. "Health effects of reduced workload for older employees," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 29(5), pages 554-566, May.
    • Handle: RePEc:wly:hlthec:v:29:y:2020:i:5:p:554-566
    DOI: 10.1002/hec.4002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1002/hec.4002
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1002/hec.4002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Terhi Ravaska, 2023. "Do reduced working hours for older workers have health consequences and prolong work careers?," Working Papers 6, Finnish Centre of Excellence in Tax Systems Research.

    More about this item

    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:wly:hlthec:v:29:y:2020:i:5:p:554-566. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/cgi-bin/jhome/5749 .

    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.