Mental Health and Productivity at Work: Does What You Do Matter?

Melisa Bubonya (), Deborah Cobb-Clark and Mark Wooden
Additional contact information
Melisa Bubonya: Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne, http://melbourneinstitute.com/staff/mbubonya/default.html

Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series from Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne

Abstract: Much of the economic cost of mental illness stems from workers’ reduced productivity. We analyze the links between mental health and two alternative workplace productivity measures – absenteeism and presenteeism (i.e., lower productivity while attending work) – explicitly allowing these relationships to be moderated by the nature of the job itself. We find that absence rates are approximately five percent higher among workers who report being in poor mental health. Moreover, job conditions are related to both presenteeism and absenteeism even after accounting for workers’ self-reported mental health status. Job conditions are relatively more important in understanding diminished productivity at work if workers are in good rather than poor mental health. The effects of job complexity and stress on absenteeism do not depend on workers’ mental health, while job security and control moderate the effect of mental illness on absence days.

Keywords: Mental health; presenteeism; absenteeism; work productivity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I12 J22 J24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 54pp
Date: 2016-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hea, nep-lma, nep-ltv and nep-neu
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
http://melbourneinstitute.unimelb.edu.au/downloads ... series/wp2016n16.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Mental health and productivity at work: Does what you do matter? (2017)
Working Paper: Mental Health and Productivity at Work: Does What You Do Matter? (2016)
Working Paper: Mental Health and Productivity at Work: Does What You Do Matter? (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iae:iaewps:wp2016n16

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Melbourne Institute Working Paper Series from Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research, The University of Melbourne, Victoria 3010 Australia. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sheri Carnegie ().