Labor Market Institutions and Individual Absenteeism in the European Union: The Relative Importance of Sickness Benefit Systems and Employment Protection Legislation

In this article, we analyze the determinants of individual absenteeism focusing on the “strictness” of employment protection and the “generosity” of sickness benefits. The data come from the “European Survey on Working Conditions” launched in 2000. Due to its coverage (the EU‐14), the data enable us to identify the relative importance of the institutional framework for explaining differences in absence behavior across nations. Our results reveal that, first, employment protection does not influence the number of absence days while sickness benefits increase absenteeism. And, second, the impact of the institutional framework is smaller than that of some individual worker characteristics.