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The proposed study is aligned with the ongoing ADR ‘OCCUMEN Study’ which examines the prevalence and correlates of mental disorders (MDs) across occupational categories. This related study will examine sex-specific temporal trends in mental disorders and causes of death across occupation types before and following the onset of the Covid-19 (C-19) pandemic and examine associations with family responsibilities.
Carers are increasingly important in providing help and support to people with a health condition or who have trouble with everyday activities. Children and young people who provide care (“young carers”) are an often overlooked but important group of carers. Young carers are a particularly difficult group to recruit and retain in large scale longitudinal population studies. There have been very few longitudinal studies of young carers thus far and most of the previous research has been cross-sectional. There has also been very little exploration of inequalities in the effects of being a young carer to look at whether associations differ by gender, ethnicity or socioeconomic circumstances.
It has been reported that the daily commute to work in the UK accounts for around one fifth of all journeys each day (Pooley & Turnbull, 2000). This statistic highlights the importance of understanding the workings of the phenomenon and ensuring that, as a modern society, we are adequately prepared for it.
Over recent decades Northern Ireland’s labour market has been characterised by inequality, largely as a result of its place within a religiously divided society. One manifestation of this division has been a higher average employment rate among the Protestant population relative to the Roman Catholic population. Many explanations were offered for this disparity, the most contentious of which was religious discrimination (see Smith and Chambers, 1991). Concurrent with legislation enacted to address such discrimination, Northern Ireland underwent much economic and social transformation. These events, it has been argued, made a joint contribution to reducing the religion-employment disparity (see Shuttleworth and Osborne, 2004) – but it is not clear whether this remains the case, or whether other inequalities have arisen (or displaced past inequalities). Indeed, it is much less clear whether inequalities within religious groupings (e.g. between Protestant denominations) have developed over time and whether these could be of greater significance than those between the two main communities.
This project aims to examine the relationship between birth weight/pre-term births and educational attainment, with reference to other related variables including geography, family background and socio-economic status to explore whether birth weight is an accurate predictor of educational attainment through a data linkage project between health trust data and the NILS database.
Social mobility refers to how great individuals’ opportunities are for advancement through social and occupational grades or classes. A widely used indicator of the level of fairness in a society is whether or not successive generations are enabled to attain occupations at higher grades than those achieved in previous generations of their family or household.
The relationship between occupation and population health is complex, but understanding their interrelationships is a policy priority. It is widely accepted that being in employment is associated with health benefits. However, there is a lack of detailed understanding about the relative mortality risks of specific occupations and whether health-related benefits of employment occur across all occupations.
