Staffing in Day-Care Institutions and Teacher Sickness Absenteeism

Presenter: Mette Gørtz, AKF, Danish Institute of Governmental Research

Abstract

This paper investigates possible determinants of teacher absenteeism due to sickness in Danish day-care institutions and pre-schools. In particular, it is investigated whether work pressure measured by staffing, i.e. the number of children per teacher in the institutions, affect the risk of becoming long-term ill. Furthermore, we investigate the role of individual characteristics, characteristics at the workplace level as e.g. sickness of colleagues, the size of the institution, the proportion of staff who are trained pre-school teachers, family background characteristics of the children in the pre-school etc. and characteristics at the municipality level as e.g. staffing, municipality expenses per child in day-care and pre-schools etc. The paper develops a model that takes account of unobserved heterogeneity at both the individual level, the workplace level, and the municipality level by employing the methodology developed in labour economics for analysing employer-employee linked data. We have access to a unique data set with information from Danish administrative registers about workplace characteristics and individual characteristics, sickness absenteeism, medical records, employment history and background characteristics for the main part of the employees as well as children in day-care institutions and pre-schools in a panel for the period 2000-2005.