title: Self-perceived job insecurity and the demand for medical rehabilitation: does fear of unemployment reduce health care utilization?
abstract: An inverse relationship between job insecurity and sickness absence has been established in the literature, which is explained by employees avoiding to send signals of both poor health and uncooperative behavior towards the employer. In this paper, we focus on whether the same mechanism applies to the demand for medical rehabilitation measures. This question has recently gained much interest in the context of the current public debate on presenteeism. Using county-level unemployment rates as instrument for the employees' fear of job loss on the individual level, we find that an increase in subjective job insecurity substantially decreases the probability of participating in medical rehabilitation.
authors.affiliation: Rhine-Westphalia Institute for Economic Research (RWI), Essen, Germany.
authors.forename: Arndt R
authors.initials: AR
authors.lastname: Reichert
authors.forename: Boris
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Augurzky
authors.forename: Harald
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Tauchmann
mesh_terms: D000041:Absenteeism; D000328:Adult; D000367:Age Factors; D005239:Fear; D005260:Female; D005858:Germany; D006296:Health Services / Q000706:statistics & numerical data; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D017059:Models, Econometric; D010342:Patient Acceptance of Health Care / Q000523:psychology*; D012046:Rehabilitation / Q000523:psychology*; D012737:Sex Factors; D018582:Sick Leave; D012959:Socioeconomic Factors; D014478:Unemployment / Q000523:psychology*
keywords: absenteeism; health care utilization; job worries; medical rehabilitation; moral hazard; presenteeism; sick leave; unemployment