Sickness absence and disability pension three years before and seven years after first childbirth: A Swedish population-based cohort study

Aims: There is a widely held belief, in Sweden and internationally, that women with children are more likely to be on sickness absence (SA) than their nulliparous counterparts. However, empirical findings in the field are limited and inconsistent. We aimed to explore initially nulliparous women’s patterns of SA and disability pension (DP) three years before and seven years after 2009, by later parity. Methods: We conducted a longitudinal cohort study of nulliparous women in Sweden on 31 December 2009 ( N=426,918). We compared crude and standardized numbers of SA/DP net days in the three years before (Y–3 to Y–1) and the seven years (Y+1 to Y+7) after the date of the first birth in 2010 or 2 July 2010 in the following three groups: (1) women with no childbirth during the seven-year follow-up and an additional nine months (i.e. 7.8 years), (2) women with a first childbirth in 2010 and no additional childbirth during the next 7.8 years, and (3) women with their first childbirth in 2010 and minimum one more during the next 7.8 years. Results: Women remaining nulliparous had consistently more standardized mean SA/DP days than women giving birth. Compared with women with one birth, women with several births had similar mean numbers of standardized SA/DP days during Y–3 and Y–2, more during Y+1 to Y+3 and fewer during Y+4 to Y+7. Conclusions: In contrast to the widely held societal belief, we found that in all years women who gave birth had fewer SA/DP days than those remaining nulliparous.