Why does temporary work increase disability insurance inflow?

Pierre Koning, Paul Muller and Roger Prudon

Labour Economics, 2025, vol. 96, issue C

Abstract: We show that workers with fixed-term contracts are substantially more likely to apply for and be awarded disability insurance (DI) benefits than permanent workers. We study whether this differential can be explained by (i) selection of worker types into contracts, (ii) the relation between contract type and the risk of illness, (iii) differences in employer support during illness, and (iv) differences in labour market prospects of ill workers. We find that selection actually masks part of the differential, whereas the impact of contract type on health is limited. In contrast, the difference in employer support during illness is a significant cause of the heightened DI risk of temporary workers, especially in slack labour markets. We therefore conclude that, conditional on being ill, workers with fixed-term contracts face different support structures and incentives that make them more likely to ultimately apply for and be awarded DI.

Keywords: Disability insurance; Temporary work; Employer incentives; Worker health (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: H53 I1 J08 J22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0927537125000466
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:labeco:v:96:y:2025:i:c:s0927537125000466

DOI: 10.1016/j.labeco.2025.102719

Access Statistics for this article

Labour Economics is currently edited by A. Ichino

More articles in Labour Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().