Abstract
The paper investigates whether health insurance expansion affects illness-related absenteeism at the workplace among workers in Ghana. The paper employs household- level data from the Ghana Living Standard Survey and applies count data estimation techniques to investigate how health insurance affects the expected time, workers spend out of work, due to illness. The results show that health insurance reduces the extent of illness-related absenteeism at the workplace. The decline in the extent of illness-related absenteeism at the workplace is observed for insured workers in both sectors of the economy, but the reduction is lower in the informal sector than in the formal sector. The reduction is also lower for younger than older workers.
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Labour productivity in this analysis refers to the amount of goods and services that a worker produces in a given time.
This usually occurs when the net benefit of insurance exceeds the net loss, when the value of lost output due to illness-related absenteeism exceeds the cost of insurance on illness-related absenteeism among older workers in the US. Lofland and Frick (2006) examine the effects of health insurance on workplace absenteeism in the US workforce and find that health insurance significantly reduced the number of workdays missed due to illness. A study by Dizioli and Pinheiro (2016) also investigates how health insurance affects labour productivity through a reduction in the expected time workers spend out of work on sick days. They find that workers with health insurance miss fewer workdays than those without health insurance. However, Vistnes (1997), who examines how insurance affects gender differences in days lost from work due to illness in the US, finds that insurance increases illness-related absenteeism in the workplace. These results make the findings inconclusive. Considering differences in healthcare access, mortality, morbidity and life expectancy rate between developed and developing countries, investigating the effect health insurance has on illness-related absenteeism at the workplace in a developing country context is important for health insurance policy analyses.
Workers aged 15–49 years were classified as younger workers and 50–60 years as older workers. The study considered workers aged 50–60 years to be older workers because the retirement age for formal sector workers starts at 55 years (voluntary retirement age) and compulsory retirement is 60 years.
The analysis in the paper concentrates on larger sample estimates to avoid gap in age range.
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Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to Dr Terence Cheng from the University of Adelaide, now at Harvard University for his advice, helpful comments, and generosity with his time. I am also grateful to participants of the 40th Australian Health Society conference for their insightful comments.
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Darkwah, F. Does health insurance affect illness-related absenteeism at the workplace in Ghana?. J. Soc. Econ. Dev. 26, 555–581 (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40847-023-00256-x
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40847-023-00256-x