Workers' Compensation Filing and Income Loss

This study investigated the association between workers' comp filing/collecting behavior and income loss. Out of the 2918 filed cases, only 46.5% (=1356/2918) were covered by workers' comp. Regardless of the filing status, the percentage of workers' collecting workers' comp benefits among 5204 injured was 26.1% (= 1356/5204). Longitudinal analyses with multiple logistic regression models using NLSY 79 data (29,520 observations panel data= 3280 injured workers multiplied by 9 years) were conducted using SAS 9.1. Results showed that job characteristics such as craftsmen or laborer occupational categories, job insecurity, industry with hazardous working conditions are better predictors of occupational injury/illness and workers' comp filing than are personal characteristics such as age race, and marital status. Injured workers with low income (less than 20000 USD), low education (less than high school), high severity (> 5 missed work days excluding the incident day) were more likely to lose wages after they filed for workers' comp claims. Workers' comp filing resulted in the higher probability of lost wages (OR= 1.07, 95% C.I.= 1.06_1.08). The probability of lost wages was high for the low-income group when compared to the high-income group (OR= 2.21, 95% C.I.= 1.85_2.48). The odds ratio was significantly higher in the workers with high severity who filed workers' comp (OR= 4.99, 95% C.I.= 4.54_6.01). The probability of lost wages did not change significantly with demographic factors. These findings suggest that when negative filing effects dominate, workers' comp effectiveness on the employee side needs to be targeted.