The Anatomy of U.S. Sick Leave Schemes: Evidence from Public School Teachers

Christopher J Cronin; Matthew C. Harris; Nicolas R. Ziebarth

doi:10.1162/rest.a.1699

The Anatomy of U.S. Sick Leave Schemes: Evidence from Public School Teachers

Christopher J Cronin¹; Matthew C. Harris²; Nicolas R. Ziebarth^3,4

¹ University of Notre Dame, Department of Economics, 3060 Jenkins Nanovic Halls,Notre Dame, IN 46556, USA · ² University of Tennessee, Haslam College of Business, Department of Economics and Boyd Center for Business and Economic Research, 722A Stokely Management Center, 916 Volunteer Boulevard, Knoxville, TN 37996-0570, USA [email protected] · ³ ZEW Mannheim, Labour Markets and Social Insurance, L7,1, D-68161 Mannheim, Germany [email protected] · ⁴ University of Mannheim and affiliated with NBER and IZA Bonn

The Review of Economics and Statistics 2026

Abstract We study how public school teachers use paid sick leave. Most US sick leave schemes operate as individualized credit accounts: Paid leave is earned, and unused leave accumulates. We construct a unique dataset of daily leave balances and behavior among 982 teachers for 2010–2018. Sick leave use increases during flu season, and evidence indicates that the average teacher does not use sick leave for leisure, though some subsets of teachers (e.g., the young and inexperienced) do. Usage increases with leave balance; the elasticity is around 0.4. Further, teachers with higher balances are less likely to work sick, particularly during flu season.

DOI: 10.1162/rest.a.1699
Pages: 1-46
Language: en
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