Reliable data on work-related injuries and fatalities are unavailable for most countries around the world. This lack of credible data could hamper efforts to improve work-place safety, particularly in developing countries where workplace safety is often not even recognized as a public health priority. This study provides estimates of the number and rate of workplace fatalities for 215 countries from 1989-2013 using data from the International Labor Organization (ILO). The ILO requires its member countries to report the annual number of fatal occupational injuries, but only 39 countries reported credible statistics during the study period. Counts for the remaining 176 countries are imputed by using negative binomial regression to model a country's occupational fatalities as a function of the size of the labor force, real Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the real GDP per capita, and the breakdown of economic output by sector. The paper finds that: (i) there were approximately 250,000 work-related fatalities per year, (ii) the global burden has shifted towards the low-income parts of the world, and (iii) the official counts in most countries severely underreport their occupational injuries.
