In recent years, a number of welfare state economies, including Norway, have experienced substantial increases in sickness absence. Using longitudinal individual register data for virtually all Norwegian employees, we examine the remarkable rise since the early 1990s, with emphasis on...

Has the relative unemployment propensity for the low-skilled increased during the 1990’s? We address this question empirically, based on two notions of ‘low skills’; i) low education, and ii) low ability, conditioned on education and work experience. Ability is identified by previous...