Abstract
SUMMARYPublic sector employees are often said to have excessive rates of absence from work. Using representative survey data for Germany, we indeed find absenteeism of employees to be higher in the public than the private sector. The differences in the incidence and days of absence showing up in descriptive statistics are substantially reduced and partly disappear in our estimates of hurdle regression models controlling for individuals’ socio‐demographic characteristics, health status, professional activities, and for many workplace‐related factors. Nevertheless, the probability of staying home sick at least once a year is still 5.6 percentage points higher in the public sector, ceteris paribus. This finding refutes popular assertions that differences in absence rates between the sectors are mainly due to structural factors like different compositions of the workforce. We show that the same observable factors play a role for absenteeism in the public and private sector, but we cannot rule out that shirking may play a more important role in the public sector. Nevertheless, we conclude that the stereotype of the “malingering bureaucrat” seems to be an exaggeration, at least for Germany.
Highlights
The public sector differs from the private sector in many respects, most notably its higher employment security, the virtual absence of market competition, and the stronger roles of unions and worker participation
In the UK, the annual sickness absence benchmarking survey by XpertHR showed for the year 2015 that “absence rates in the public sector continued to be higher than the private sector” (Faragher 2016), and Chancellor George Osborne announced a review of sickness absence and sick pay in the public sector (Bevan 2016)
The differences in the average numbers of occasions and days of absence between sectors partly reflect the fact that many more private than public sector employees state that they never stayed home sick in the previous year. When looking at those employees who were absent at least once in the last 12 months, the differences between the public and the private sector become more blurred: there remains a higher average number of sickness occasions in the public sector (1.95 compared to 1.75), the conditional number of workdays lost due to sickness absence is somewhat higher in the private sector. These findings suggest that behavioural differences between public and private sector employees are more pronounced in the incidence and occasions than in the workdays lost due to sickness absence
Summary
The public sector differs from the private sector in many respects, most notably its higher employment security, the virtual absence of market competition, and the stronger roles of unions and worker participation. The various perspectives taken result in a long list of potential determinants of sick leave and absence from work These determinants have been investigated in a substantial number of empirical studies conducted by economists, sociologists, psychologists, and occupational health researchers (for reviews, see, e.g., Thalmaier 2002, Allebeck and Mastekaasa 2004, Osterkamp and Röhn 2007, Beemsterboer et al 2009). Most of these analyses focus on paid employees in the private sector, and some of them take account of selfemployed individuals (e.g., Spierdijk et al 2009, Lechmann and Schnabel 2014).
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Free) 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a call
