The Public Health Costs of Job Loss

Andreas Kuhn (), Rafael Lalive and Josef Zweimüller ()
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Andreas Kuhn: Swiss Federal Institute for Vocational Education and Training

No 4355, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We study the short-run effect of involuntary job loss on comprehensive measures of public health costs. We focus on job loss induced by plant closure, thereby addressing the reverse causality problem of deteriorating health leading to job loss as job displacements due to plant closure are unlikely caused by workers' health status, but potentially have important effects on individual workers' health and associated public health costs. Our empirical analysis is based on a rich data set from Austria providing comprehensive information on various types of health care costs and day-by-day work history at the individual level. Our central findings are: (i) overall expenditures on medical treatments (hospitalizations, drug prescriptions, doctor visits) are not strongly affected by job displacement; (ii) job loss increases expenditures for antidepressants and related drugs, as well as for hospitalizations due to mental health problems for men (but not for women); and (iii) sickness benefits strongly increase due to job loss.

Keywords: health; plant closure; social cost of unemployment; job loss (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 I19 J28 J65 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42 pages
Date: 2009-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hap, nep-hea and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (164)

Published - published in: Journal of Health Economics, 2009, 28(6), 1099-1115

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Related works:
Journal Article: The public health costs of job loss (2009)
Working Paper: The Public Health Costs of Job Loss (2009)
Working Paper: The Public Health Costs of Job Loss (2009)
Working Paper: The public health costs of job loss (2009)
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