Child-to-Teacher Ratio and Day-Care Teacher Sickness Absenteeism

The literature on occupational health points to work pressure as a trigger of sickness absence. However, reliable, objective measures of work pressure are in short supply. This paper uses Danish day-care teachers as an ideal case for analysing whether work pressure measured by the child-to-teacher ratio, i.e. the number of children per teacher in an institution, affects teacher sickness absenteeism. We control for individual teacher characteristics, workplace characteristics, and family background characteristics of the children in the day-care institutions. Our estimation results indicate that the child-to-teacher ratio is positively related to sickness absence for 2005-2006, but not for 2002-2004.