Income Inequality as a Moderator of the Relationship between Psychological Job Demands and Sickness Absence, in Particular in Men: An International Comparison of 23 Countries

Johanna Muckenhuber, Nathalie Burkert, Franziska Großschädl and Wolfgang Freidl

PLOS ONE, 2014, vol. 9, issue 2, 1-6

Abstract: Objectives: The aim of this study was to investigate whether more sickness absence is reported in countries with higher income inequality than elsewhere, and whether the level of income inequality moderates the association between psycho-social job demands and sickness absence. Methods: Our analysis is based on the Fifth European Working Conditions Survey that compared 23 European countries. We performed multi-level regression analysis. On the macro-level of analysis we included the Gini-Index as measure of inequality. On the micro-level of analysis we followed the Karasek-Theorell model and included three scales for psychological job demands, physical job demands, and decision latitude in the model. The model was stratified by sex. Results: We found that, in countries with high income inequality, workers report significantly more sickness absence than workers in countries with low income inequality. In addition we found that the level of income inequality moderates the relationship between psychological job demands and sickness absence. High psychological job demands are significantly more strongly related to more days of sickness absence in countries with low income inequality than in countries with high income inequality. Conclusions: As the nature and causal pathways of cross-level interaction effects still cannot be fully explained, we argue that future research should aim to explore such causal pathways. In accordance with WHO recommendations we argue that inequalities should be reduced. In addition we state that, particularly in countries with low levels of income inequality, policies should aim to reduce psychological job demands.

Date: 2014
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal.pone.0086845 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article/file?id= ... 86845&type=printable (application/pdf)

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:plo:pone00:0086845

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0086845

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS ONE from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosone ().