Incidence of workers compensation indemnity claims across socio-demographic and job characteristics

BACKGROUND: We hypothesized that low socioeconomic status, employer-provided health insurance, low wages, and overtime were predictors of reporting workers compensation indemnity claims. We also tested for gender and race disparities. METHODS: Responses from 17,190 (person-years) Americans participating in the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, 1997-2005, were analyzed with logistic regressions. The dependent variable indicated whether the subject collected benefits from a claim. RESULTS: Odds ratios for men and African-Americans were relatively large and strongly significant predictors of claims; significance for Hispanics was moderate and confounded by education. Odds ratios for variables measuring education were the largest for all statistically significant covariates. Neither low wages nor employer-provided health insurance was a consistent predictor. Due to confounding from the "not salaried" variable, overtime was not a consistently significant predictor. CONCLUSION: Few studies use nationally representative longitudinal data to consider which demographic and job characteristics predict reporting workers compensation indemnity cases. This study did and tested some common hypotheses about predictors.