Research Type: Work, Health & Social Mobility

Our beta project was based upon fertility in the period 2001-11. Part of this involved the examination of educational attainment over the two Censuses. A remarkable outcome from this was that in about one tenth of cases educational attainment fell between the two Censuses. Most dramatically, over 1,300 of those who were recorded as having a degree in 2001 were listed as having no qualification in 2011.

The object of this project is to identify the factors that explain the fall in educational attainment and to examine their applicability in census responses to health questions where the situation is complicated by the status being able to deteriorate as well as improve.

There is an extensive literature on the effects of birth month on educational, labour market, and health outcomes in later life. In England and Wales, there is evidence that those with summer births in July and August have poorer educational and labour market outcomes (see for example Crawford et al 2007) and in the USA it has been suggested that those with winter births experience poorer later outcomes (Buckles et al 2010). This proposal aims to extend this work to Northern Ireland by considering, for the first time in this context, the impact of birth month on later life and health outcomes. It also seeks to make a comparative contribution since the difference in the definition of the school year between Northern Ireland (starting on July 1st) and England & Wales (starting on September 1st) offers much potential for cross-national comparative analysis.

The importance of the early years for ensuring health, prosperity and wellbeing throughout the life course now informs the economic and social planning of Governments across the UK and internationally, informing, for example, the move towards publically funding pre-school education. Gaining a better understanding of the effect that the social environment can have on children and young people is important for identifying ways to mitigate harmful influences.  Low familial Socioeconomic Status (SES) has been found to have a negative effect on child health but studies have shown that this effect diminishes over time especially where SES increases in adulthood.

There is a wealth of research literature showing the salutogenic effects of employment and the deleterious effects of unemployment and threats of unemployment. However, the potentially harmful effects of excessive working have not been studied in Westernised Societies to date.

In contrast both the Japanese and Chinese have a word (‘karoshi’, ‘guolaosi’ respectively) for death due to overwork and this is an official cause of death for which the government pays compensation.

This project aims to look at health status, mobility, demographic and socio-economic characteristics by occupational group with a specific focus on the characteristics of workers in the health and social care sector in Northern Ireland.

Small area-based measures of income are being developed through an ESNSG project with the University of Essex. These statistics will give data on the probability of households in each small area falling below a given low-income threshold. This methodology is to be extended further in a separate NISRA project which is to be applicable at a household level. The current project will apply this model to each NILS member giving the probability that their household falls below an income threshold. This modelled income probability will then be used as a proxy for income in future NILS projects such as production of mortality and fertility rates by income probability and investigation of migration patterns. However, this project will focus on providing background information and evaluating the usefulness and accuracy of results produced using the income model.

Northern Ireland is one of the most deprived areas in the UK and until fairly recently, consistently had the highest rates of unemployment, and long-term unemployment, and lowest proportions of the population of working age defined as economically active, of any of the regions within the UK. Remarkably however, there has been very little research into the relationship between unemployment and ill-health here, due principally to the absence of adequate data sources. Most would agree that research in this area is fraught with methodological difficulties and that many questions surrounding the relationship between unemployment and ill-health still remain unanswered. This proposed study is a series of linked studies using the NILS to examine the relationship between unemployment and ill-health in Northern Ireland.