Long-term Sickness Absence Among Professionals: Investigating Gender, Socioeconomic Position and Care Work

Abstract

This study investigates whether the risk of long-term sickness absence among professionals depends upon their socioeconomic position and whether they do caring work. It also explores whether the variation in risk can be attributed to sociodemographic and labor market factors. The event history analysis is based on longitudinal register data from the entire population of Norwegian professionals from 2003 to 2013. The results showed that both low socioeconomic position and being a care worker was associated with long-term sickness absence. The group with the highest risk was professionals of lower socioeconomic position doing caring work. While the results were similar for men and women, the relative risk of sickness absence was higher for male professionals. Sociodemographic and labor market factors partly explained the observed association, and even more so for men. Several candidate explanations for the remaining association as well as potential implications for social policy are discussed.