Health equity in work
The Work research theme focuses on employment states, transition and job quality, and how these affect health outcomes for workers and their families.
The Work conceptual framework
Our framework explained
In our conceptual framework, work relates to the complex, multi-level factors shaping employment states, transitions, and job quality, and how these affect health outcomes for workers and their families. We analyse worker characteristics and employment policies, mediating pathways and macro-level influences across the life course.
Being in work (particularly good quality work) can support health, while unemployment, economic inactivity, and poor-quality work can lead to negative outcomes.
The length of time spent in some employment states and in good or poor-quality work influences health outcomes for workers and their families.
The relationship between employment, job quality, and health is mediated by distal factors (such as changes in time structure, social engagement, income and savings) and proximal factors (such as biological, psychological, and behavioural responses that arise as a result). Together, these processes shape health outcomes.
The central pathway linking employment to health is embedded within wider social and policy structures (including employment support schemes and legislation governing job quality), and shaped by individual-level factors determining everyday working lives.
Worker characteristics (gender, age, education, geography and place) intersect to affect both the likelihood of occupying different employment states and being able to access good quality work.
Early labour market experiences can shape later opportunities, exposures, and vulnerabilities, while broader macro-level conditions (such as the UK’s employment regime, welfare and social distribution) structure the opportunities and constraints individuals encounter at different stages of life.
The framework is underpinned by a lifecourse perspective: employment states, job quality, and their associated health effects accumulate and interact over time.
Work topic areas
The Work theme investigates policy-relevant questions pertaining to employment and health. Our research is focused around addressing the central question: which policy and practice changes to improve working conditions & access to healthy work will most effectively reduce intersectional health inequalities, both during working life and beyond?
Our research is structured around three key interconnected work packages:
- Improving health through improving job quality
- Health and workforce participation/economic inactivity
- Recognising variations in work-health solutions
In line with recent policy priorities, our research focuses on two key areas: work and health conditions and disabilities, and young people and unemployment, education and training. Our research aims to be solution-oriented: identifying how to improve healthy and sustainable workforce participation.
Work and health conditions and disabilities
What do experiences of work currently look like for individuals with health conditions and disabilities? Are there inequalities in accessing good quality jobs? How might recent changes in policy around flexible working offer individuals with health conditions more opportunities to enter the labour market?
Young people and unemployment, education and training
What are the pathways which result in young people leaving education, employment, and training? How does neighbourhood deprivation act as a mediator of the relationship between having poor mental health and leaving education, employment, and training?
The Work theme team
If you’re interested in our work in the Work theme, feel free to get in touch.
Baowen Xue
Work Theme Co-Lead baowen.xue.10@ucl.ac.uk
Niamh Bridson Hubbard
Work Theme Co-Lead Niamh.hubbard@ucl.ac.uk
Kat Smith
Work Theme Team Member katherine.smith.100@strath.ac.uk
Katharine Timpson
Work Theme Team Member katharine.timpson@strath.ac.uk
Anne McMunn
Work Theme Team Member
a.mcmunn@ucl.ac.uk