Workload, staff composition, and sickness absence: findings from employees in child care centers.

The study investigates the relationship between workload and absence due to illness among employees in Norwegian kindergartens, as well as how this correlation varies between kindergartens with more kindergarten teachers than assistants.

The results show that a higher number of kindergarten teachers with a high level of education per child is associated with lower absence due to illness. However, more assistants without higher education per child leads to increased absence due to illness. This suggests that the variation in absence due to illness in kindergartens may be driven by differences in staff composition, and not necessarily the workload.

The data material consists of data from Statistics Norway's employer-employee register, which provides information on gender, age, education and absence due to illness for each employee. The researchers also used a register at kindergarten level that provides information on the number of children, age groups and the proportion of minority children in each kindergarten. Based on these registers, the researchers calculated the number of adults, kindergarten teachers and assistants per child in each kindergarten. The sample comprises 3904 kindergartens.

Drange, N., Gunnes, T. & Telle, K. (2021). "Workload, staff composition, and sickness absence: findings from employees in child care centers". Empirical Economics, 61(6):3375-3400.