Health-Related Productivity Loss According to Health Conditions among Workers in South Korea

Dong-Wook Lee, Jongin Lee, Hyoung-Ryoul Kim and Mo-Yeol Kang
Additional contact information
Dong-Wook Lee: Department of Preventive Medicine, College of Medicine, Seoul National University, Seoul 08826, Korea
Jongin Lee: Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul 07345, Korea
Hyoung-Ryoul Kim: Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul 07345, Korea
Mo-Yeol Kang: Department of Occupational and Environmental Medicine, Seoul St. Mary’s Hospital, College of Medicine, The Catholic University of Korea, Seoul 07345, Korea

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 14, 1-11

Abstract: This study aimed to investigate the degree of health-related productivity loss (HRPL) for common health conditions. A total of 4197 workers participated in a web-based questionnaire survey from January to February 2020. HRPL was measured using the Work Productivity and Activity Impairment questionnaire, and a difference in HRPL was calculated for each common health condition. The burden of productivity loss due to each health condition was calculated by the product of the difference in HRPL scores and the percentage of participants who complained. The health conditions most strongly associated with increased HRPL were infertility treatment (30.6%), osteoporosis (25.9%), cancer (25.3%), gastric ulcer or duodenal ulcer (25.0%) and anaemia (23.9%). The most important health conditions in order of their magnitude of induced burden of productivity loss were fatigue, neck or shoulder pain, insufficient sleep, back pain, headache, common cold and flu, insomnia, anxiety and diarrhoea or constipation. HRPL is more strongly and importantly associated with the aforementioned health conditions. Occupational health managers should prioritise addressing health conditions strongly and importantly associated with HRPL when implementing health promotion programmes.

Keywords: productivity loss; health status; health conditions; absenteeism; presenteeism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/14/7589/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/14/7589/ (text/html)

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:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:14:p:7589-:d:595732

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().