Explanatory variables Total Sex Age De facto marital status Occupational status Employment Housing Tenure Quality of physical working environment Presence of Stress at work Work-related social Support Number of persons in study sample Corresponding number of persons in Swedish population than 90 SA days had 19.0 times higher odds of reporting reduced working capacity of more than three months than the reference group (0–28 days) in an age- and sex- adjusted model (Model I). When we adjusted for age, sex, de facto marital status, occupational status, employment, housing tenure, quality of physical working environment, presence of stress at work, and work-related social support in a main effect model (Model II), the ORs of self-reported reduced working capacity decreased only marginally: less than 10% for all SA ≥29 days (Table 3). Men and people living alone had slightly higher odds of reporting reduced working capacity than women and mar- ried/cohabiting people in Model II. Unskilled or skilled manual workers and lower level employees had about 51 to 61% higher odds of reporting reduced working capacity than middle-level employees and professionals in the main effect model. Part-time employees had an OR of 1.79 (95% CI = 1.62–1.98) compared with full-time employees (OR = 1). Those with a poor physical working environment showed a significantly higher odds of reporting reduced working capacity (OR = 1.36; 95% CI = 1.23–1.51) than those with a good physical working envi- ronment. Categories and levels Male Female 25–34 35–44 45–54 55–64 Living alone Married/cohabiting Unskilled manual workers Skilled manual workers Lower-level employees Middle-level employees and professionals Part-time Full-time Renting Owning Poor Good Yes No Poor Good _______ Estimated (N) Length of sickness absence (days) 0–28 89.3 50.5 49.5 27.4 28.4 28.2 16.0 24.2 75.8 22.9 18.0 15.5 43.6 28.8 71.2 28.8 71.2 23.4 76.6 37.8 62.2 6.8 93.2 19,858 2,957,000 29–90 5.2 33.5 66.5 28.3 24.5 28.6 18.6 24.5 75.5 32.4 23.0 14.1 30.5 32.0 68.0 32.0 68.0 35.7 64.3 41.4 58.6 7.3 92.7 1,147 169,000 >90 5.7 33.2 66.8 15.4 20.2 34.5 29.9 26.6 73.4 34.6 19.3 15.0 31.1 31.0 69.0 31.0 69.0 37.9 62.1 46.5 53.5 9.8 90.2 1,276 189,000 BMC Public Health 2007, 7:45 http://www.biomedcentral.com/1471-2458/7/45 Table 1: The distribution (percentage) of explanatory variables by length of sickness absence among people with paid employment. Table 4 compares the prevalence (percentage) of addi- tional outcomes and distribution of explanatory variables in three groups of employed people who reported no reduced working capacity due to longstanding illness: those who took 0–28 days of SA, those who took SA 29– 90 days of SA, and those who took >90 days of SA. In total, 29.3% of all persons on sick leave >90 days failed to report reduced working capacity (of more than 3 months) due to a longstanding illness, after-effects of an accident, disability, or other ailment (data not shown in table). Table 4 shows that 38.8% of those who took 29– 90 days of sick leave and 52.9% of those who took >90 days of sick leave, however, reported at least one other health problem: psychosomatic complaints, anxiety, or poor health. Those who took 0–28 days of SA had a prev- alence of any additional outcome of 27.0%. The largest groups of those on sick leave ≥ 29 days who did not report reduced working capacity due to a long- standing illness were women persons aged 25–34 and 45– 54, middle-level employees and professionals, persons with a good physical working environment, and persons with no stress at work Page 5 of 11 (page number not for citation purposes)