Inability to Work Fulltime and the Association with Paid Employment One Year After the Work Disability Assessment: A Longitudinal Register-Based Cohort Study

TL;DR

This study examines how the inability to work fulltime affects paid employment one year after a disability benefit assessment in the Netherlands.

Contribution

The study reveals that inability to work fulltime has limited association with future paid employment, but this varies by disease group.

Findings

Inability to work fulltime is not generally associated with paid employment one year later.

For working applicants with musculoskeletal disease, inability to work fulltime increases odds of paid employment.

For non-working applicants with respiratory disease, inability to work fulltime decreases odds of paid employment.

Abstract

Disability benefit applicants with residual work capacity are often not able to work fulltime. In Dutch work disability benefit assessments, the inability to work fulltime is an important outcome, indicating the number of hours the applicant can sustain working activities per day. This study aims to gain insight into the association between inability to work fulltime and having paid employment 1 year after the assessment.

The study is a longitudinal register-based cohort study of work disability applicants who were granted a partial disability benefit (n = 8300). Multivariable logistic regression analyses were conducted to study the association between inability to work fulltime and having paid employment 1 year after the assessment, separately for working and non-working applicants.

For disability benefit applicants, whether working (31.9%) or not working (68.1%) at the time of the disability assessment, there was generally no association between inability to work fulltime and having paid employment 1 year later. However, for working applicants diagnosed with a musculoskeletal disease or cancer, inability to work fulltime was positively and negatively associated with having paid employment, respectively. For non-working applicants with a respiratory disease or with multimorbidity, inability to work fulltime was negatively associated with paid employment.

Inability to work fulltime has limited association with paid employment 1 year after the disability benefit assessment, regardless of the working status at the time of assessment. However, within certain disease groups, inability to work fulltime can either increase or decrease the odds of having paid employment after the assessment.

The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10926-024-10212-z.

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