Prevalence and Economic Costs of Absenteeism in an Aging Population—A Quasi-Stochastic Projection for Germany

Demographic change is leading to the aging of German society. As long as the baby boom cohorts are still of working age, the working population will also age—and decline as soon as this baby boom generation gradually reaches retirement age. At the same time, there has been a trend toward increasing...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Forecasting 2022-03, Vol.4 (1), p.371-393
Main Authors: Vanella, Patrizio, Wilke, Christina Benita, Söhnlein, Doris
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Absenteeism
Age
Aging
Baby boomers
cohort-component method
Costs
Demographics
demography
Disability
Economic impact
Economics
Employment
Fertility
Forecasting
Investigations
Labor
Labor force
Labor market
Labor supply
Monte Carlo methods
Mortality
multivariate methods
Population
Retirement
stochastic forecasting
time series analysis
Trends
World War II
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Summary:Demographic change is leading to the aging of German society. As long as the baby boom cohorts are still of working age, the working population will also age—and decline as soon as this baby boom generation gradually reaches retirement age. At the same time, there has been a trend toward increasing absenteeism (times of inability to work) in companies since the zero years, with the number of days of absence increasing with age. We present a novel stochastic forecast approach that combines population forecasting with forecasts of labor force participation trends, considering epidemiological aspects. For this, we combine a stochastic Monte Carlo-based cohort-component forecast of the population with projections of labor force participation rates and morbidity rates. This article examines the purely demographic effect on the economic costs associated with such absenteeism due to the inability to work. Under expected future employment patterns and constant morbidity patterns, absenteeism is expected to be close to 5 percent by 2050 relative to 2020, associated with increasing economic costs of almost 3 percent. Our results illustrate how strongly the pronounced baby boom/baby bust phenomenon determines demographic development in Germany in the midterm.
ISSN:2571-9394
2571-9394
DOI:10.3390/forecast4010021