Working Paper: NBER ID: w29956
Authors: Christopher J. Cronin; Matthew C. Harris; Nicolas R. Ziebarth
Abstract: This paper studies how U.S. employees use paid sick leave. The most common U.S. sick-leave schemes operate as individualized credit accounts---paid leave is earned over time and unused leave accumulates, producing an employee-specific "leave balance." We construct a unique administrative dataset containing the daily balance information and leave behavior of 982 public school teachers from 2010 to 2018. We have three main findings: First, we provide evidence of judicious sick-leave use---namely, teachers use more sick leave during higher flu activity---but no evidence of inappropriate use for the purposes of leisure. Second, we find that leave use is increasing in the leave balance with an average balance-use elasticity of 0.45. This relationship is strongest at the very bottom of the balance distribution. Third, we find that a higher leave balance reduces the likelihood that a teacher works sick ("presenteeism"), especially during flu season. Taken together, these results suggest that a simple alteration to the current sick-leave scheme could reduce the likelihood of presenteeism, thereby lowering infection risk in schools, with few adverse consequences.
Keywords: sick leave; public school teachers; presenteeism; flu activity; leave balance
JEL Codes: I12; I13; I18; J22; J28; J32; J38
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Flu activity (I19) | Sick leave usage (J22) |
| Leave balance (J22) | Sick leave usage (J22) |
| Leave balance (J22) | Presenteeism (J22) |
| Sick leave usage increases with leave balance (J22) | Presenteeism (J22) |