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Incidence of workers compensation indemnity claims across socio‐demographic and job characteristics
Author(s) -
Du Juan,
Leigh J. Paul
Publication year - 2011
Publication title -
american journal of industrial medicine
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.7
H-Index - 104
eISSN - 1097-0274
pISSN - 0271-3586
DOI - 10.1002/ajim.20985
Subject(s) - indemnity , medicine , workers' compensation , incidence (geometry) , compensation (psychology) , environmental health , occupational medicine , occupational exposure , occupational safety and health , actuarial science , pathology , psychology , physics , optics , business , psychoanalysis
Background We hypothesized that low socioeconomic status, employer‐provided health insurance, low wages, and overtime were predictors of reporting workers compensation indemnity claims. We also tested for gender and race disparities. Methods Responses from 17,190 (person‐years) Americans participating in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, 1997–2005, were analyzed with logistic regressions. The dependent variable indicated whether the subject collected benefits from a claim. Results Odds ratios for men and African‐Americans were relatively large and strongly significant predictors of claims; significance for Hispanics was moderate and confounded by education. Odds ratios for variables measuring education were the largest for all statistically significant covariates. Neither low wages nor employer‐provided health insurance was a consistent predictor. Due to confounding from the “not salaried” variable, overtime was not a consistently significant predictor. Conclusion Few studies use nationally representative longitudinal data to consider which demographic and job characteristics predict reporting workers compensation indemnity cases. This study did and tested some common hypotheses about predictors. Am. J. Ind. Med. 54:758–770, 2011. © 2011 Wiley‐Liss, Inc.