Urban Commuting Time and Sick-Leave Medical License Use: An Empirical Study of Santiago, Chile
37 Pages Posted: 15 Jan 2022
Abstract
We use data from the Chilean unemployment insurance program covering 20% of all formal sector workers to study the impact of commuting time on the likelihood of medical licences sick-leave use in Santiago, Chile. We estimate panel-data probit models for the determinants of medical license behavior using the pseudo-demeaning algorithm and incidental parameter bias correction approach proposed by Stammann, Heiss and McFadden (2016). In some specifications, we follow Anderson, et al. (2018) and use a sub-sample of workers who suffered from mass unemployment to control for possible endogenous job location choice. All our empirical results indicate that longer commuting times are associated with an increase in the probability of sick leave. We also find evidence that mobility infrastructure investments help reduce sick leave behavior. The results of this paper have implications for measuring the social costs of congestion and for the estimation of wider economic benefits of transport projects.
Keywords: sick-leave behavior, transport project appraisal, probit paneldata models, urban mobility
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation