Disability, Work Absenteeism, Sickness Benefits, and Cancer in Selected European OECD Countries—Forecasts to 2020

BACKGROUND: Disability either due to illness, aging, or both causes remains an essential contributor shaping European labor markets. Ability of modern day welfare states to compensate an impaired work ability and absenteeism arising from incapacity is very diverse. The aims of this study were to establish and explain intercountry differences among selected European OECD countries and to provide forecasts of future work absenteeism and expenditures on wage replacement benefits. METHODS: Two major public registries, European health for all database and Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development database (OECD Health Data), were coupled to form a joint database on 12 core indicators. These were related to disability, work absenteeism, and sickness benefits in European OECD countries. Time horizon 1989–2013 was observed. Forecasting analysis was done on mean values of all data for each single variable for all observed countries in a single year. Trends were predicted on a selected time horizon based on the mean value, in our case, 7 years up to 2020. For this purpose, ARIMA prediction model was applied, and its significance was assessed using Ljung–Box Q test. RESULTS: Our forecasts based on ARIMA modeling of available data indicate that up to 2020, most European countries will experience downfall of absenteeism from work due to illness. The number of citizens receiving social/disability benefits and the number being compensated due to health-related absence from work will decline. As opposed to these trends, cancer morbidity may become the top ranked disability driver as hospital discharge diagnoses. Concerning development is the anticipated bold growth of hospital discharge frequencies due to cancer across the region. This effectively means that part of these savings on social support expenditure shall effectively be spent to combat strong cancer morbidity as the major driver of disability. CONCLUSION: We have clearly growing work load for the national health systems attributable to the clinical oncology acting as the major disability contributor. This effectively means that large share of these savings on public expenditure shall effectively be spent to combat strong cancer morbidity. On another side, we have all signs of falling societal responsibility toward the citizens suffering from diverse kinds of incapacity or impaired working ability and independence. Citizens suffering from any of these causes are likely to experience progressively less social support and publicly funded care and work support compared to the golden welfare era of previous decades.