The UK government has set out strategies to help families recover from COVID-19, prioritising re-engaging pupils in school, supporting parents into employment and helping families access mental health support. But were parents adversely affected by the pandemic – and if so, which parents suffered most? Boqing Chen and colleagues from the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health and the International Centre for Lifecourse Studies in Society and Health at University College London looked at Millennial parents and found some fathers were hit particularly hard compared their peers wi ..read more

As part of its levelling up agenda, the UK Government has set itself an ambitious target to add five additional healthy years to the average UK lifespan by 2035. In this blog Dr Emily Murray from the Department of Epidemiology and Public Health at University College London highlights lessons from the Health in Older People in Places project (HOPE), which she leads. HOPE uses data from the ONS Longitudinal Study to showing the link between levels of employment and health in a place. We know place matters when working to extend healthy life expectancy (HLE) – there are large inequalities in olde ..read more

A recently-launched Parliamentary inquiry is asking if policy needs to be changed to deal with the personal impact of night time or shift work. So how do unsocial working hours affect parents? Afshin Zilanawala from the University of Southampton and Anne McMunn from the ESRC International Centre for Lifecourse Studies at University College London discuss research which finds shift work that working non standard schedules (nights, evenings, weekends) can impact negatively on fathers’ mental health – though it also enables them to spend more time parenting. Five years ago, the Taylor Review of W ..read more

Extending people’s working lives has become a well-established policy in many parts of Europe as governments seek to reduce state pension costs in the context of growing ageing populations. But there are concerns about the health of older workers and what poor health among workers might mean for sickness absence rates and social security costs. New research looking at working longer and sickness absence rates suggests that it might be possible to raise the retirement age without increasing sickness absence rates and social security costs unduly, but the researchers also raise concerns about wi ..read more

In October 2020, WorkLife featured research  from Baowen Xue and Anne McMunn showing how badly the pandemic was affecting the mental health of working parents, especially single mothers. The researchers expressed concerns over the reversal of pre-pandemic trends towards a more gender equal society and supported calls from the Women’s Budget Group for a care-led recovery. Now a team of researchers from the University of Bristol-led Equal Lives project has gone on to look at the way domestic work was shared during and after lockdown in 2020. Susan Harkness from the University of Bristol and ..read more

Extending people’s working lives has become a well-established policy in many parts of Europe as governments seek to reduce state pension costs in the context of growing ageing populations. But there are concerns about the health of older workers and what poor health among workers might mean for sickness absence rates and social security costs. New research looking at working longer and sickness absence rates suggests that it might be possible to raise the retirement age without increasing sickness absence rates and social security costs unduly, but the researchers also raise concerns about wi ..read more

In October 2020, WorkLife featured research  from Baowen Xue and Anne McMunn showing how badly the pandemic was affecting the mental health of working parents, especially single mothers. The researchers expressed concerns over the reversal of pre-pandemic trends towards a more gender equal society and supported calls from the Women’s Budget Group for a care-led recovery. Now a team of researchers from the University of Bristol-led Equal Lives project has gone on to look at the way domestic work was shared during and after lockdown in 2020. Susan Harkness from the University of Bristol and ..read more

As populations across the developed world grow older, Governments are keen to find ways to enable workers to stay active and fit for longer. We know work-related stress can lead to long-term health problems: but which types of employment histories are particularly harmful, and how do the effects play out over time? A new study by Morten Wahrendorf, Tarani Chandola and colleagues points to a need for early intervention with disadvantaged groups of workers. Most studies on occupational stress focus on a particular point in time. But what if the effects of troubled working lives build up over man ..read more

In 2020, 8.4 million people of working age (16-64) reported that they were disabled which is 20% of the working age population. 52 percent of disabled people aged 16-64 were in work compared with  81 percent of non-disabled people. It’s a gap the Department for Work and Pensions wants to tackle, but good research for evidence-based policy solutions in this area is thin on the ground. New research from Tarani Chandola and Patrick Rouxel suggests that ‘workplace accommodations’ such as flexible or part-time working, mentorship and training and support could help the Government achieve ..read more

The pandemic has brought links between unemployment and mental health to the fore. With joblessness having risen across the globe, new research looking at the longer-term effects is particularly timely. Liam Wright and colleagues from UCL’s Department of Epidemiology and Public health describe new research which could motivate efforts to target vulnerable groups and use resources efficiently. We have known for some time that unemployment has a detrimental effect on mental health. And we know, too, that these effects can last for many years. A large body of research tells us those who have a sp ..read more