Nikolaos Prodromidis

(Universität Duisenburg Essen)

will give a presentation on 

Working hours and workers’ health: Evidence from a national experiment in Sweden

Abstract

Despite the importance of regulating working hours for workers’ health and maintaining labour productivity, the literature lacks credible causal estimates for the short- and particularly long-run. We provide new evidence for the causal effect of reduced working hours on mortality using full population register data, exploiting a nation-wide policy in Sweden that reduced the weekly working hours from 55 to 48 hours for certain occupations only in 1920. Using difference-in-differences and event-study models, we show that lower working hours decreased mortality by around 15% over the first six years, with effects primarily driven by reductions in heart diseases and workplace accidents. Causal forest estimators indicate particularly strong effects for older workers. The reform had substantial and persistent long-term effects, increasing longevity of affected workers over the next 50 years by around one year. Our results imply that many lives could be saved worldwide by reducing long working hours for labour-intensive occupations.

Seminar co-organized by CORE.