Sickness absence in a Swedish county : with reference to gender, occupation, pregnancy and parenthood

Sammanfattning: The occurrence of sickness absence in relation to gender, occupation, age, pregnancy and parenthood was analysed in a Swedish county. Data on all new sick-leave spells exceeding 7 days in the county of Östergötland (400,000 inhabitants) were recorded in 1985-1987. Information on diagnoses, occupation, age, gender, number of children etc. for each of the 45,000 persons sicklisted/year were included in the database. Incidence measures were obtained using census data as denominator.The largest and most consistent variation in occurrence of sickness absence concerned occupation and gender, When categorising the occupations according to degree of gender-segregation, women in the extremely maledominated group (>90% men) had exceptionally high sick-leave rates, while both men and women in the group of gender-integrated occupations had significantly lower sick-leave rates. These variations with male-and female domination of occupational groups were found for sickness absence in general as well as for sick-leave due to pregnancy-related diagnoses. Men with custody of young children had the lowest sickness absence, young women in the same situation the highest, while there were no gender differences in persons without young children. Sickness absence due to pregnancy-related diagnoses varied to a large degree with occupation, but was still high in occupations with a generally low sickness absence, and increased much more than in any otherdiagnostic group over the three years. About half of the gender differences in sickness absence could be explained by sickness absence among pregnant women.In conclusion, the occurrence of sickness absence was associated with gender, age, occupation, gender segregation of occupation, pregnancy and parenthood. Further research should focus on etiological studies and intervention trials.