Health Economics Early View (Articles online in advance of print)Published Online: 22 Dec 2006
Research Article
The association of alcohol dependency with employment probability: evidence from the population survey Health 2000 in Finland
Edvard Johansson 1 *, Hannu Alho 2 3, Urpo Kiiskinen 4, Kari Poikolainen 2 5
1Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration, Helsinki, Finland
2Department of Mental Health and Alcohol Research, National Public Health Institute, Helsinki, Finland
3Research Unit of Substance Abuse Medicine, University of Helsinki, Helsinki, Finland
4Department of Health and Functional Capacity, National Public Health Institute, Helsinki, Finland
5The Finnish Foundation for Alcohol Studies, Helsinki, Finland
email: Edvard Johansson (edvard.johansson@hanken.fi)
*Correspondence to Edvard Johansson, Swedish School of Economics and Business Administration, Perhonkatu 6B, 00100 Helsinki, Finland
Abstract
In this paper, we investigate to what extent alcohol-dependent individuals fare worse in the Finnish labour market, using data from a large Finnish health survey.
We used the DSM-IV criteria for alcohol dependence assessed by a composite international diagnostic interview (CIDI).
We find that there are substantial disadvantages for alcohol-dependent men and women in the labour market, in the sense that they have lower employment probabilities.
Treating alcohol dependence as an exogenous variable, we find that alcohol dependence is associated with decrease in the probability of full-time or part-time work of around 14 percentage points for men and 11 percentage points for women.
However, accounting for endogeneity increases the negative effect to some 50 percentage points for men and to some 40 percentage points for women.
