On the differential impact of the recent economic downturn on work safety by nativity: the Spanish experience

Abstract

This paper explores differences in work injury and fatality rates between immigrants and natives and how they may have been impacted by the recent economic downturn. Our focus is on Spain over the 2001-2010 decade -a period of time during which Spain received one of the largest immigrant inflows of any developed economy and subsequently experienced a recession that has raised national unemployment rates above 20 percent. We find that immigrants worked in riskier jobs than natives during this high immigration period. Furthermore, the recession appears to have exclusively reduced job injury rates, but not fatality rates, among the average immigrant -hinting on their misreporting due to fear of dismissal as the primary cause for the observed decline. Overall, the figures are suggestive of work safety inequalities that may be important to address. JEL codes: J61, J81

Occupational accidents and the economic cycle in Spain 1994–2014

“…But Nielsen et al (2015) show that changes in reporting behaviour do not seem to play a significant role in the relation between the business cycle and workplace injuries in a Danish context. Various authors have observed the pro-cyclical behaviour of occupational accidents in Spain (e.g., Arango and Valdivia, 2000;Castejón, 2000;Arocena and Núñez, 2005;Martín, 2006;Crespán, 2007 Amuedo-Dorantes andBorra, 2013;De la Fuente et al, 2014). Martín (2006) tries to verify whether the pro-cyclical behaviour of occupational accidents in Spain can be considered a real phenomenon that reflects changes in the working conditions along the economic cycle, or is instead a purely statistical effect.…”

Risky work: Accidents among Nepalese migrant workers in Malaysia, Qatar and Saudi Arabia

“…Several HIC-based studies (e.g. from Canada, Spain, Germany and the United States) indicate that immigrants are over-represented in physically demanding high-risk jobs including manufacturing, construction and farming (2,3) and have higher rates of occupational injury than native-born workers (3,4).…”

Improving the Representativeness of a Simple Random Sample: An Optimization Model and Its Application to the Continuous Sample of Working Lives

“…Data gathered from the CSWL have been widely used by academics to investigate a number of issues connected with the Spanish economy and relevant socioeconomic conditions. These include immigrants and immigration policy (see [32][33][34][35][36][37][38]), the Labor market (see [39][40][41][42][43][44][45][46][47][48][49][50][51]), the equity, sustainability, transparency and other aspects of the Public Pension System (see [52][53][54][55][56][57][58][59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66]), the impact of the economic crisis (see [67][68][69][70]), the usefulness of the MCVL (see [71][72][73][74][75]), the unemployment ( [76][77][78]…”