ارتباط طولی بین توسعه اقتصادی و حوادث ناشی از کار در چین

The relativity between economic development and occupational accidents is a debated topic. Compared with the development courses of both economic development and occupational accidents in China during 1953–2008, this paper used statistic methods such as Granger causality test, cointegration test and impulse response function based on the vector autoregression model to investigate the relativity between economic development and occupational accidents in China from 1953 to 2008. Owing to fluctuation and growth scale characteristics of economic development, two dimensions including economic cycle and economic scale were divided. Results showed that there was no relationship between occupational accidents and economic scale during 1953–1978. Fatality rate per 105 workers was a conductive variable to gross domestic product per capita during 1979–2008. And economic cycle was an indicator to occupational accidents during 1979–2008. Variation of economic speed had important influence on occupational accidents in short term. Thus it is necessary to adjust Chinese occupational safety policy according to tempo variation of economic growth.

Occupational safety is essential for a country to keep social stability and to develop national economy in healthy way. It can protect labors as well as normal production order; per contra, economic development can create social wealth and supply less-hazardous technical condition for workers, and a benign cycle thus can be formed. Hence there is an inherent certain relationship between occupational safety and economic development. Statistic studies (Wang, 2006a and Hämäläinen, 2009) have found that occupational safety situation was closely related to the social and economic development in different countries or in different historical stages. Generally speaking, occupational safety situation in developed countries are better than that of developing countries. According to the statistic data collected by International Labor Organization, fatality rate per 105 workers in developed countries was rather low, which was 4 on average, while fatality rate per 105 workers in developing countries were above 10 (Fan, 2003).

In summary, the purpose of this study was to explore relativity between economic development and occupational accidents. Findings were limited, possibly due to limited data, but still indicated that economic scale was associated with decline of occupational death rate, and economic cycle was an indicator of work safety during 1979–2008. It seems that economy boom would make occupational accidents increase; economy depression would make occupational accidents decrease. As in all studies based on existing data sources, our results must be interpreted with care. In the first place, China registration in coding of occupational accidents is different from other countries, only data on death toll and yearly fatality rate per 105 workers could be found. It is very difficult for us to extract a complete set of reliable data on these parameters. Secondly, the problem of underreporting does exist although ironhanded punish policies have been made. But it cannot be excluded that one of our major findings, economic cycle could influence occupational accidents on national level, is partly based on registration bias. Probably, however, we are dealing with a real phenomenon.