PEOPLE increasingly cover up accidents at work when the economy is in recession. The new finding has important implications for safety audits, which depend on accurate accident statistics.
It is known that accident rates at work fall as unemployment goes up, and vice versa. Several possible explanations for this have been suggested. One is that the workers companies take on during boom times are not as competent as the ones they keep in the lean years.
But Jan Boone and Jan van Ours of Tilburg University in the Netherlands suspected the dip might be due to under-reporting. Although there are an average of more than 7 million accidents every year in the European Union, the more minor of these might go unreported during a recession if workers feared that taking time off or complaining could lose them their jobs. Meanwhile, because fatal accidents can鈥檛 be concealed, rates of these should remain roughly constant. 鈥淔atal accidents are always reported because it is difficult to cover up a missing person,鈥� says Boone.
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To test this theory, the researchers looked at accident statistics from 17 OECD countries. Sure enough, a 10 per cent rise in unemployment coincided with an average fall of 1.6 per cent in the non-fatal accident rate. But there was no corresponding fall in the rate of fatal accidents. They conclude that the variation in the overall accident rate is an illusion caused by under-reporting (Centre for Economic Policy Research Discussion Paper 3655).
The accident statistics didn鈥檛 reveal what kinds of accidents were going unlogged, but Boone suspects they were mostly minor. 鈥淲e do not know whether someone hurt his toe or lost a leg,鈥� he says. 鈥淭he theory suggests that major accidents always get reported, but some minor accidents may go unreported if unemployment is high.鈥�
Boone adds that there is no point in launching safety campaigns in response to rising accident rates if they are the result of an economic upturn. Instead, campaigns should encourage people to log minor accidents during high unemployment. Safety audits often depend on analysing numerous minor accidents to remedy problems that could cause a major accident.
鈥淭here is massive under-reporting of accidents,鈥� agrees Roger Bibbings of Britain鈥檚 Royal Society for the Prevention of Accidents. 鈥淛ob security does affect the health and safety culture.鈥� Workers report twice as many minor accidents in larger companies as in smaller ones, he adds, yet workers in smaller companies have twice the risk ofa serious accident.
