The Global Epidemic of Occupational Injuries: Counts, Costs, and Compensation

Reliable data on work-related injuries and fatalities are unavailable for most countries around the world. This lack of credible data hampers efforts to improve work-place safety, particularly in developing countries where it is often not even recognized as a public health priority. The first chapter develops annual estimates of the count and the rate of workplace fatalities for 215 countries. The paper finds that, over the past two decades, the global burden has shifted towards the low-income parts of the world and that the official counts in most countries severely underreport their occupational injuries.;The second chapter focuses on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, which rely heavily on migrant labor. This chapter is an institutional review of work injury compensation policies in the GCC countries and it assesses how well they protect the labor force that is primarily comprised of migrant workers. It focuses on the benefits to which injured workers and their beneficiaries are entitled and compares them against benefits awarded in other countries with similar labor composition and economy. The chapter finds that work injury compensation laws in the GCC countries, as they apply to migrant workers, struggle to meet most of the objectives of a modern worker's compensation system.;The third chapter presents a case study that further investigates the adequacy of the compensation benefits by estimating the economic loss when a Nepali migrant worker dies in Qatar, while recognizing the unique nature of the economic migration: it is legally temporary. The methodology includes developing the age-earnings profiles of workers in Qatar and Nepal, modeling the duration of their stay, and assessing the value of their contribution to the household production. The chapter finds that, even when accounting for the temporary nature of the economic migration, an overwhelming majority of bereaved Nepali families are entitled to benefits that are lower than the lost earning potential of their deceased relative.