Restricted Work Due to Workplace Injuries: A Historical Perspective

In anticipation of upcoming data on worker characteristics and on case circumstances surrounding workplace injuries that result in job transfer or restricted work, new tabulations look at trends in the outcome of workplace injuries over the past several decade

Sensory Atypicalities in Dyads of Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and Their Parents

Sensory atypicalities are a common feature of autism spectrum disorder (ASD). To date, the relationship between sensory atypicalities in dyads of children with ASD and their parents has not been investigated. Exploring these relationships can contribute to an understanding of how phenotypic profiles may be inherited, and the extent to which familial factors might contribute towards children's sensory profiles and constitute an aspect of the broader autism phenotype (BAP). Parents of 44 children with ASD and 30 typically developing (TD) children, aged between 3 and 14 years, participated. Information about children's sensory experiences was collected through parent report using the Sensory Profile questionnaire. Information about parental sensory experiences was collected via self-report using the Adolescent/Adult Sensory Profile. Parents of children with ASD had significantly higher scores than parents of TD children in relation to low registration, over responsivity, and taste/smell sensory processing. Similar levels of agreement were obtained within ASD and TD parent-child dyads on a number of sensory atypicalities; nevertheless significant correlations were found between parents and children in ASD families but not TD dyads for sensation avoiding and auditory, visual, and vestibular sensory processing. The findings suggest that there are similarities in sensory processing profiles between parents and their children in both ASD and TD dyads. Familial sensory processing factors are likely to contribute towards the BAP. Further work is needed to explore genetic and environmental influences on the developmental pathways of the sensory atypicalities in ASD

Developmental Markers of Genetic Liability to Autism in Parents: A Longitudinal, Multigenerational Study

Genetic liability to autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can be expressed in unaffected relatives through subclinical, genetically meaningful traits, or endophenotypes. This study aimed to identify developmental endophenotypes in parents of individuals with ASD by examining parents’ childhood academic development over the school-age period. A cohort of 139 parents of individuals with ASD were studied, along with their children with ASD and 28 controls. Parents’ childhood records in the domains of language, reading, and math were studied from grades K-12. Results indicated that relatively lower performance and slower development of skills (particularly language related skills), and an uneven rate of development across domains predicted ASD endophenotypes in adulthood for parents, and the severity of clinical symptoms in children with ASD. These findings may mark childhood indicators of genetic liability to ASD in parents, that could inform understanding of the subclinical expression of ASD genetic liability

Safety segregation: The importance of gender, race, and ethnicity on workplace risk

economic inequality, employment conditions, fatalities, hedonic equilibrium, non-fatal injuries, Oaxaca decomposition, occupational choice, standardized injury rates, workplace safety,

Workers' Compensation and Occupational Injuries and Illnesses.

A longitudinal establishment data set is used to assess the effect of changes in workers' compensation benefits on the incidence of lost-workday injury and illness cases in manufacturing for the years 1979-84. Higher benefits are found generally to increase lost-workday cases. However, consistent with theory, the benefit effect is smaller in larger, more highly experience-rated establishments. After initial estimates are obtained using ordinary and weighted least squares, several count data models are explored that are more appropriate for the integer industry and illness counts in the data. The results are consistent across the specifications. Copyright 1991 by University of Chicago Press.

Workers' Compensation and the Distribution of Occupational Injuries

This paper studies the impact of workers' compensation income benefits on injury rates and on the distribution of injuries by severity. I develop econometric models for correlated counts of injuries that are estimated on a longitudinal data set of 2,798 manufacturing establishments. I find that higher benefits increase the frequencies of most nonfatal injuries, but reduce the frequency of fatalities. Also, higher benefits increase the probability that a given injury involves days away from work, but reduces the chance that it is a fatality or a minor injury.