@article{b1ee50fed5fb49b2aafbc4ecb07091be,
title = "What do workplace wellness programs do? Evidence from the Illinois workplace wellness study",
abstract = "Workplace wellness programs cover over 50 million U.S. workers and are intended to reduce medical spending, increase productivity, and improve well-being. Yet limited evidence exists to support these claims. We designed and implemented a comprehensive workplace wellness program for a large employer and randomly assigned program eligibility and financial incentives at the individual level for nearly 5,000 employees. We find strong patterns of selection: during the year prior to the intervention, program participants had lower medical expenditures and healthier behaviors than nonparticipants. The program persistently increased health screening rates, but we do not find significant causal effects of treatment on total medical expenditures, other health behaviors, employee productivity, or self-reported health status after more than two years. Our 95% confidence intervals rule out 84% of previous estimates on medical spending and absenteeism.",
author = "Damon Jones and David Molitor and Julian Reif",
note = "Funding Information: ∗This research was supported by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health under award number R01AG050701; the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1730546; the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) North America U.S. Health Care Delivery Initiative; Evidence for Action (E4A), a program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; and the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. This study was preregistered with the American Economics Association RCT Registry (AEARCTR-0001368) and was approved by the Institutional Review Boards of the National Bureau of Economic Research, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and University of Chicago. Funding Information: ∗This research was supported by the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health under award number R01AG050701; the National Science Foundation under Grant No. 1730546; the Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab (J-PAL) North America U.S. Health Care Delivery Initiative; Evidence for Action (E4A), a program of the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation; and the W.E. Upjohn Institute for Employment Research. This study was preregistered with the American Economics Association RCT Registry (AEARCTR-0001368) and was approved by the Institutional Review Boards of the National Bureau of Economic Research, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and University of Chicago. We thank our coinvestigator Laura Payne for her vital contributions to the study, Lauren Geary for outstanding project management, Michele Guerra for excellent programmatic support, and Illinois Human Resources for invaluable institutional support. We are also thankful for comments from Kate Baicker, Jay Bhattacharya, Tatyana Deryugina, Joseph Doyle, Amy Finkelstein, Colleen Flaherty Manchester, Eliza Forsythe, Drew Hanks, Bob Kaestner, David Meltzer, Michael Richards, Justin Sydnor, Richard Thaler, and numerous seminar participants. We are grateful to Andy de Barros for thoroughly replicating our analysis and to J-PAL for coordinating this replication effort. The findings and conclusions expressed are solely those of the authors and do not represent the views of the National Institutes of Health, any of our funders, or the University of Illinois. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} The Author(s) 2019.",
year = "2019",
month = nov,
day = "1",
doi = "10.1093/qje/qjz023",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "134",
pages = "1747--1791",
journal = "Quarterly Journal of Economics",
issn = "0033-5533",
publisher = "Oxford University Press",
number = "4",
}