The impact of occupational injury reduction on the U.S. economy.
BACKGROUND
Preventing occupational injuries reduces labor and fringe benefit costs to employers. The related savings filter through the economy, impacting its performance. This study is a first attempt to measure the impact of occupational injury reduction on national economic output, gross domestic product, national income, and employment by using an input-output model of the U.S. economy.


METHODS
Occupational injury costs by industry for 1993 were used as a baseline for an input-output model, and the impact of the 38% injury rate reduction between 1993 and 2002 was measured. All computations are in year 2000 dollars.


RESULTS
Declining occupational injury between 1993 and 2002 increased employment by an estimated 550,000 jobs. The increase in gross domestic product (GDP) was 25.5 billion US dollars or 9% of the average annual GDP increase from 1993 to 2002.


CONCLUSIONS
These estimates represent the benefits of injury rate reduction but ignore associated prevention costs.
Zaloshnja
Eduard
E
Pacific Institute for Research & Evaluation, Calverton, Maryland 20705, USA. zaloshnja@pire.org
Miller
Ted R
TR
Waehrer
Geetha
G
D000056:Accident Prevention / Q000191:economics*; D000062:Accidents, Occupational / Q000191:economics* / Q000517:prevention & control* / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D003365:Costs and Cost Analysis; D006801:Humans; D015994:Incidence; D018803:Models, Economic; D014481:United States