Abstract:
This study investigates the effect of missed instruction time in school on short-term educational performance as well as long-term retirement income and mortality. Using self-gathered Swedish register data, we are able to distinguish total days of absence within a school year and missed instructional time due to sickness. Using various fixed effects strategies and an instrumental variables approach we find that individual absence leads on average to a decrease of 4.4% of standard deviation in educational performance per school year. Our results suggest that the negative effect of sickness is mainly driven by missed instructional time. The sign of the long-run consequences of absence are in line with economic theory but the effect size is rather small.