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Is Leisure Contagious? The Relationship Between Sickness Absence and Spousal Retirement

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  26 March 2020

Patrik Hesselius
Patrik Hesselius*
Affiliation:
Institute for Labour Market Evaluation (IFAU) and Department of Economics, Uppsala University
*
e-mail: patrik.hesselius@ifau.uu.se
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Abstract

This paper studies the relationship between sickness absence and spousal retirement. Swedish panel data have been used to estimate the effects of both old-age retirement and disability retirement on average sickness absence during 1996 to 2001 for men and women. Spousal old-age retirement significantly increases female average long-term sickness absence by approximately one week per year, while spousal disability retirement yields a significant increase in average sickness absence for men by approximately one week and for women by approximately two weeks per year.

Keywords

Sickness absencesickness insurancehealthretirementI18J14J22J28
Type
Articles
Information
National Institute Economic Review , Volume 209 , July 2009 , pp. 104 - 115
Copyright
Copyright © 2009 National Institute of Economic and Social Research

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Footnotes

∗

I am grateful to Alex Bryson, Matias Eklöf, Magnus Gustavsson, Bertil Holmlund, Per Johansson, Maarten Lindeboom and seminar participants at the Department of Economics, Uppsala University for helpful comments and suggestions.

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