Accident Risk in the Production Sector of EU Countries—Cohort Studies

Krzysztof Nowacki
Additional contact information
Krzysztof Nowacki: Department of Production Engineering, Silesian University of Technology, 44-100 Katowice, Poland

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 7, 1-14

Abstract: (1) Background: accident rates prove the uneven development of the member countries in the area of work safety. Remedial actions and structural programmes should take into account, e.g., the level of work safety in all European Union (EU) countries. Aim: the identification of differences in the level of work safety in the production sector of EU countries, especially the so-called “old” and “new” EU countries. (2) Methods: for each country UE (in 2008–2018), the relative risk (RR) of an accident at work was determined and a comparative analysis was conducted. (3) Results: an increase in the RR of an accident at work was observed along with an increase in the GDP of a given country. It was found that the level of occupational safety in Sweden and the United Kingdom is higher than in other countries, and lower in Spain and Portugal. In the three largest economies of the EU, Germany, France, and Italy, the RR of the accident in the industrial sector in relation to the national data is one of the lowest in the entire EU, not exceeding 1.3. In The Netherlands, an increase of 1.7 RR of fatal accidents in the industrial sector was observed between 2008 and 2018. (4) Conclusions: RR in the manufacturing sector of the so-called “old” EU is higher than in the so-called “new” EU, which may result from the implementation of Industry 4.0 assumptions in the “old” EU. The presented results and conclusions may be useful in shaping the EU policy in the field of sustainable development of production sectors of individual member countries.

Keywords: relative risk; accidents at work; production; European Union; GDP (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 (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/7/3618/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/7/3618/ (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:7:p:3618-:d:527359

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 ().