IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/epo/papers/2009-19.html

Contagion Nation: A Comparison of Paid Sick Day Policies in 22 Countries

Author

Listed:
  • Jody Heymann
  • Hye Jin Rho
  • John Schmitt
  • Alison Earle

Abstract

This report finds that the U.S. is the only country among 22 countries ranked highly in terms of economic and human development that does not guarantee that workers receive paid sick days or paid sick leave. Under current U.S. labor law, employers are not required to provide short-term paid sick days or longer-term paid sick leave. By relying solely on voluntary employer policies to provide paid sick days or leave to employees, tens of millions of U.S. workers are without paid sick days or leave. As a result, each year millions of American workers go to work sick, lowering productivity and potentially spreading illness to their coworkers and customers.

Suggested Citation

  • Jody Heymann & Hye Jin Rho & John Schmitt & Alison Earle, 2009. "Contagion Nation: A Comparison of Paid Sick Day Policies in 22 Countries," CEPR Reports and Issue Briefs 2009-19, Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR).
    • Handle: RePEc:epo:papers:2009-19
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.cepr.net/documents/publications/paid-sick-days-2009-05.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Skatun, John Douglas, 2003. "Take some days off, why don't you?: Endogenous sick leave and pay," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(3), pages 379-402, May.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Pouliakas, Konstantinos & Theodossiou, Ioannis, 2010. "An Inquiry Into The Theory, Causes And Consequences Of Monitoring Indicators Of Health And Safety At Work," SIRE Discussion Papers 2010-120, Scottish Institute for Research in Economics (SIRE).
    2. Bryson, Alex & Dale-Olsen, Harald, 2017. "Does Sick Pay Affect Workplace Absence?," IZA Discussion Papers 11222, IZA Network @ LISER.
    3. Mark Weisbrot & David Rosnick, 2009. "Estimating the Cost of Contributions to the IMF," CEPR Reports and Issue Briefs 2009-18, Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR).
    4. Konstantinos Pouliakas & Nikolaos Theodoropoulos, 2012. "The Effect of Variable Pay Schemes on Workplace Absenteeism," Research in Labor Economics, in: Research in Labor Economics, pages 109-157, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    5. Monojit Chatterji & Colin Tilley, 2003. "Theoretical Approaches to Managing sickness Absenteeism," Dundee Discussion Papers in Economics 143, Economic Studies, University of Dundee.
    6. Harald Dale-Olsen, 2014. "Sickness Absence, Sick Leave Pay, and Pay Schemes," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 28(1), pages 40-63, March.
    7. Spierdijk, Laura & van Lomwel, Gijsbert & Peppelman, Wilko, 2009. "The determinants of sick leave durations of Dutch self-employed," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 28(6), pages 1185-1196, December.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • O - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth
    • O51 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - U.S.; Canada
    • O52 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Europe
    • O57 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economywide Country Studies - - - Comparative Studies of Countries
    • I - Health, Education, and Welfare
    • I18 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Health - - - Government Policy; Regulation; Public Health
    • H - Public Economics
    • H5 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies
    • H51 - Public Economics - - National Government Expenditures and Related Policies - - - Government Expenditures and 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:epo:papers:2009-19. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/ceprdus.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.