No Pain , No Gain : The Effects of Exports on Sickness , Injury , and Effort

Health is an important contributor to our well-being, but we do not fully understand how to quantify this contribution, or how demand shocks affect health. We combine Danish data on individuals’ health with Danish matched worker-firm data. We find that when firm exports rise for exogenous reasons: 1. Women have higher sickness rates. For example, a 10% exogenous increase in exports increases women’s rates of depression by 2.5%, and hospitalizations due to heart attacks or strokes by 15%. 2. Both men and women have higher injury rates, both overall and correcting for hours worked; and 3. Both men and women work longer hours and take fewer sick-leave days. We then develop a novel framework to calculate the marginal disutility of any non-fatal disease, and to aggregate across multiple types of sickness and injury to compute the total utility loss. The ex-ante utility loss due to higher sickness rates is one fifth of the wage gain from rising exports for the average man, and over one half for the average woman. Our marginal disutility estimates suggest that ex post, those who actually get injured or sick suffer large utility losses; e.g. exceeding 3 million Danish Kroner for a woman who is hospitalized due to a heart attack or stroke. JEL: I1, F1, J2 and F6. Acknowledgements: We thank the The Danish Council for Independent Research | Social Sciences for funding. For helpful comments we thank Osea Giuntella, Nils Gottfries and seminar participants at NHH Bergen, University of Oslo, University of Oxford, ESWC Montreal, University of Lund, Singapore Management University, University College Dublin, Copenhagen Business School, Aarhus University, IFN Stockholm, University of Chicago, Uppsala University and University of Oxford Trade and Health Workshop.