Workers ' Compensation Insurance and Occupational Injuries

Objectives: Although compensation for occupational injuries and diseases is guaranteed in almost all nations, countries vary greatly with respect to how they organize workers ’ compensation systems. In this paper, we focus on three aspects of workers’ compensation insurance in Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries- types of systems, em-ployers ’ funding mechanisms, and coverage for injured workers- and their impacts on the actual frequencies of occupational injuries and diseases. Methods: We estimated a panel data fixed effect model with cross-country OECD and International Labor Organization data. We controlled for country fixed effects, relevant aggregate variables, and dummy variables representing the occupational accidents data source. Results: First, the use of a private insurance system is found to lower the occupational accidents. Second, the use of risk-based pricing for the payment of employer raises the occupational injuries and diseases. Finally, the wider the coverage of injured work-ers is, the less frequent the workplace accidents are. Conclusion: Private insurance system, fixed flat rate employers ’ funding mechanism, and higher coverage of compensation scheme are significantly and positively correlated with lower level of occupational accidents compared with the public insurance system, risk-based funding system, and lower coverage of compensation scheme