Predictability of school absence for rate of sick leave

School absence was studied in all children in grade 8 (mean age 15 years) in the municipality of Linköping during the school year 1969-70. The mean absence rate was 51 lessons per year. At the mean age of 27 years, 11-13 years later, information from the Swedish Social Insurance Office was collected in a 25% random sample. The median rate of sick leave was 5.3 days per year, the median number of sickness spells, 1.7 per year, the median number of days per sickness spells, 3.0 and the median income 77 000 SEK per year. Spearman rank correlation coefficients were calculated, separately for women and men, between absence rate in grade 8 on the one hand and different rates of sick leave and income on the other. For women, rs ranged between -0.06 and 0.14, for men, -0.16 to 0.21. Thus the predictive ability of school absence for rate of sick leave was found to be very low.