Labour market participation after breast cancer for employees from the private and public sectors: Educational and sector gradients in the effect of cancer

- We estimate effects of breast cancer on labour market participation.
- We test for sector and education gradients in effects 3 years after diagnosis.
- The educational gradient is significant in the public but not in the private sector.
- The sector gradient is significant for the low-educated.
- The negative participation effect is large for low-educated in the public sector.

For employees who get cancer and survive, the probability of returning to work may depend on their ability to work, potential earnings losses if they do not return to work, qualifications and job type, but also on characteristics of the pre-cancer workplace. This paper focuses on differences between public and private sector employees in the effect of breast cancer on the probability of being out of the labour force three years after the diagnosis. We use propensity score weighting methods and a large longitudinal Danish administrative dataset which allows us to control for a wide range of important baseline characteristics such as education, sector of employment, labour market status, income, health, and demographics. We find that the educational gradient in the effect of cancer is significant in the public sector, where the estimated effects are 11.5 and 3.8 percentage points, respectively, for the low- and high-educated. The corresponding estimates for the private sector are 6.2 and 3.2 percentage points and here the educational gradient is only marginally significant. We discuss possible mechanisms behind the large sector gradient for the low-educated.