Household Work and Market Work: Toward a New Model of Worker Absenteeism

Estimates of the cost of worker absenteeism are enormous. For the British economy, the annual (but flawed) survey sponsored by the Confederation of British Industry regularly produces a number in excess of £10 billion. Despite this, economists’ studies of absenteeism are somewhat thin on the ground. Instead, empirical work on the topic has been dominated by researchers with a background in applied psychology. These studies pose questions that can be summarized as: Why do employees sometimes absent themselves from work?