Classrooms as Workplaces: How Student Composition Affects Teacher Health

Krzysztof Karbownik, Helena Svaleryd, Jonas Vlachos and Xuemeng Wang

No 34841, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Work-related burnout and stress-related sickness absence have become increasingly prevalent, but evidence on which workplace features shape workers’ mental health remains limited. Using population-level Swedish register data covering all lower- and upper-secondary teachers from 2006–2024, we show that schools serving more disadvantaged students exhibit substantially higher rates of sickness absence, particularly for stress-related diagnoses. Exploiting within-teacher variation across student cohorts, we separate sorting from exposure and find that a one standard deviation increase in student disadvantage raises overall and stress-related sick leave by 3.6% and 8.7%, respectively. Survey evidence indicates that these effects operate through classroom conditions rather than workload or organizational differences. The findings establish client composition as a distinct and policy-relevant determinant of worker health in contact-intensive occupations.

JEL-codes: I10 I21 J63 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026-02
Note: ED EH LS
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