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benefits. This is an expected effect given the design of the reform,
i.e., the incentives introduced by the co-financing reform were
intended to act in this direction. The results show that this took place
more often in groups which normally receive less rehabilitation
efforts, such as those with, at most, a high school education, those
under the age of 30 and over the age of 55, and for employees in
workplaces with, at most, 50 employees. The reform may thus have
contributed to a levelling of the use of rehabilitation between
different groups.
However, notably, increased rehabilitation benefits cannot
unambiguously be interpreted as an increase in the actual
rehabilitation measures taken. The reason for this is that, before the
reform, it was not always the case that those given rehabilitation
measures were transferred to rehabilitation benefits from sickness
benefits. As a consequence, part of the results may be explained by an
increased tendency to register rehabilitation benefits for this group.
Our analysis also reveals that individuals on part-time sick leave
moved to full-time sickness benefits to a lesser extent after the
reform, compared to before. This is also in line with the incentives
created by the co-financing reform. This result seems to apply mainly
to women, those between age 30 and age 55 and employees in large
workplaces, which are groups for whom either part-time sick leave
was common even before the reform, or the adaptation of work tasks
to part-time sick leave is easier.
International studies indicate that employers are likely to respond to
economic incentives to discourage employees' sick leave. One reason
for the limited effect of the employer co-financing reform in Sweden
found in this analysis may be that the employers had relatively little
knowledge about the reform. This is shown by earlier surveys
conducted concerning the co-financing reform. But the limited effects
may also be due to the relatively short follow-up period (the reform
was abolished after almost two years). This means that the types of
adjustment that could have materialised in the long run cannot be
studied, such as potentially intensified efforts to prevent sickness
absences.
The limited impact of the reform could also possibly be due to the
fact that the reform, on its own, provided too little economic incentive
for employers to take action to prevent sickness absenteeism, or that
the incentives were improperly designed.