Last week U of Chicago economist Casey Mulligan argued on the NYTimes Economix blog that paid sick days are an incentive for people to stay out of work–shamming sick days is the suggestion. Paid sick days, the argument goes, encourages people to stay out from work. Well, sometimes people can’t see the forest for the ideology, but help, alas, was on the way the day Mulligan posted.
CEPR senior economist John Schmitt, co-author of a report on paid sick leave in the US and Europe earlier this year, said not so fast! At noapparentmotive.org, Schmitt took issue in two ways: first, as his CEPR report, Contagion Nation, pointed out, the current system of no paid sick leave in the United States provides incentive for people to go to work sick. You see, if we measure cost, we have to measure the cost of a policy of no paid sick leave as well as the cost of some paid sick leave. You can read more about Contagion Nation at girlwpen here.
If that isn’t bad enough, Schmitt catches Mulligan on another sleight of hand. Mulligan, it seems, left off all the countries in the data set he was using that didn’t conform to his thesis that paid sick days are an incentive to stay out sick. As Schmitt explains, “Denmark, Germany, and seven other countries with more generous statutory paid sick days policies all have lower sickness absence rates than the United States. A really interesting question is: how is it that these countries are able to provide both guaranteed paid sick days and lower sickness absence rates? (And why didn’t Mulligan include these countries in his graph?)”
Andrew Leonard discusses the Schmitt response at Salon. He concludes, “Of course people, given an opportunity, will abuse generous benefits. But what explains the situations where they don’t?”
Over at Mother Jones, Nick Baumann was not so cagey in his post Economic Dishonesty. In response to the question, why the selective use of data?, he simply says, “Um, because he was being dishonest?”
I think that making working life humane for all people is a feminist issue, as the Shriver Report recently reminded us. To my mind, rebutting simplistic supply and demand arguments about work/life issues is a feminist act.
Weirdly, the New York Times has not run a correction. What a shame.
PS 11/3/09. NYTimes reported today on the concern among public health officials that lack of sick leave may worsen flu pandemic: “Tens of millions of people, or about 40 percent of all private-sector workers, do not receive paid sick days, and as a result many of them cannot afford to stay home when they are ill. Even some companies that provide paid sick days have policies that make it difficult to call in sick, like giving demerits each time someone misses a day.”
Comments
Adina — November 4, 2009
As a medical sociologist (and moderate germaphobe), I thank you for this post! We have to look at the range of intended and unintended consequences of any policy. It's sad that it's taken a major flu pandemic to get the public to think critically about sick-leave policies (or the lack thereof). There are so many ways in which we all lose when people are pressured to work while ill.
BEDSIDE MANNERS: Gender & “Constrained” Health Choices | Girl with Pen — December 24, 2009
[...] expand our understanding of the concerns expressed in this article and those articulated in a recent GWP post by fellow sociologist Virginia [...]
BEDSIDE MANNERS: Gender & “Constrained” Health Choices | Girl with Pen — December 24, 2009
[...] expand our understanding of the concerns expressed in this article and those articulated in a recent GWP post by fellow sociologist Virginia [...]
BEDSIDE MANNERS: Gender & “Constrained” Health Choices | Girl with Pen — December 24, 2009
[...] expand our understanding of the concerns expressed in this article and those articulated in a recent GWP post by fellow sociologist Virginia [...]