In 2015, the UK government exempted "low-risk" self-employed workers from legislation on workplace safety. This reversed a move two decades earlier that incorporated the self-employed more fully into the same regulatory framework as employees. This paper examines whether workplace accidents among self-employed workers shifted after these two changes to safety regulations. A difference-in-differences estimation framework suggests that the extension of regulation in 1999 had little impact on relative accident rates. In contrast, after 2015, accident rates for high and low risk self-employed converged, driven primarily by a steep fall in accident rates among those still covered by legislation.

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22 June 2022     Paper Number CEPDP1855

Download PDF - Accidents will happen: (de)regulation of health and safety legislation, workplace accidents and self employment

This CEP discussion paper is published under the centre's Labour programme.