Multiyear nonfatal work injury rates

Monthly Labor Review

Volumn 129, Issue 5, 2006, Pages 35-38

  Pergamit, Michael R ^a   Krishnamurty, Parvati ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 33744783451     PISSN: 00981818     EISSN: 00981818     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (13)

1. "Workplace Injuries and Illnesses in 2004," BLS press release, Nov. 17, 2005.
2. The NLSY79 is the only national survey that covers all types of workplace injuries, including nondisabling and injuries for which no claim was submitted. (See R. T. Reville, Jayanta Bhattacharya, and L. R. Sager Weinstein, "New Methods and Data Sources for Measuring Economic Consequences of Workplace Injuries," American Journal of Industrial Medicine, vol. 40, 2001, pp. 452-63.)
3. In 1991, the NLSY79 did not ask questions about injuries, and in 1995 and 1997, no survey was conducted.
4. For more information on the NLSY79, see NLS Handbook (Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2005);
5. and Michael R. Pergamit, Charles R. Pierret, Donna S. Rothstein, and Jonathan R. Veum, "Data Watch: The National Longitudinal Surveys," Journal of Economic Perspectives, spring 2001, pp. 239-53.
6. After 1988, respondents were asked to report any injuries since the date of the last interview. The analysis presented in this article includes only injuries occurring during the 12-month period preceding the date of the interview.
7. Only 3.3 percent of those who ever reported an injury or illness also reported a more severe injury or illness.
8. Very few illnesses are reported in the NLSY79 data. As a result, illnesses were left out of the analysis because of the relatively high likelihood that the reports would be statistically unreliable.
9. At the time this research was begun, NLSY79 data were not available for 2000. Thus, only data through 1998 are used.
10. This effect must offset a countervailing expectation that workers are more likely to report minor injuries through the medium of a survey that they might not have reported to their employer (and thus the injuries escaped notice by OSHS).
11. The latter category consists of those who completed at least 1 year of postsecondary education.
12. Injury Facts (Itasca, IL, National Safety Council, 2001);
13. see also the frequently cited study by J. Paul Leigh, Steven Markowitz, Marianne Fahs, Chonggak Shin, and Philip Landrigan, "Occupational Injury and Illness in the United States," Archives of Internal Medicine, July 28, 1997, pp. 1557-68, in which the authors estimate the total costs of workplace injuries, including fatal injuries, in 1992 at $145 billion. The costs of workplace illnesses are estimated to be an additional $26 billion.