Literacy and risk of occupational injury

We examined whether low literacy skills are a risk factor for occupational injury during a 5.3-year follow-up period.

The study population was taken from the Danish participants in the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC) in 2011/2012. Literacy skills were based on the PIAAC survey. Data on occupational injuries were obtained from national registers. We included the 5997 employees aged 16-65 who worked during the follow-up period. We used Cox regression to estimate the risk of occupational injury as a function of literacy skills. We adjusted the analysis for gender, age, nationality at birth, educational level, occupation, weekly work hours and month of survey completion.

Literacy skills were divided into four categories based on the six levels of skills in PIAAC. With the highest level of literacy skills as the reference (level 4/5), the hazard ratios for occupational injury were estimated at 1.58 (95% CI 0.80-3.15) for literacy level 3, 2.04 (95% CI 0.99-4.19) for literacy level 2 and 2.29 (95% CI 1.08-4.86) for literacy level 0/1.

Employees with a low level of literacy skills are at a higher risk of occupational injury than employees with a high level of literacy skills.