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The inter-generational transmission of health inequalities: effects of work conditions on parent resources and child health (October 2002)

How do parent’s jobs affect children's health and well-being? What sorts of working conditions and policies help employed parents? What can employees, workplaces and policy makers do to make jobs more parent- and child-friendly?

A team at the National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health has received funding from the National Health and Medical Research Council to study the effects of work not only on workers but the health and well-being of their families. Work hours, job stress, flexibility, family friendly policies and the quality of relationships at work, as well as the pay workers receive are all likely to be important. These aspects of work may alter how parents relate to their children, and the time and energy that they have. Jobs which afford parents control over when and how they work are known to enhance employee health: our question is whether they also enhance the well-being of family members, especially children.

Work conditions vary by class and occupation and have changed markedly over the last decade. They exert a direct effect on parents’ health, and also shape resources like income, time, energy and attention that parents can invest in their children, thereby influencing children's health. Because disadvantage in childhood sets in train biological and psychosocial risks that lead to compromised health and functioning in adulthood, even a small association between parent work conditions and child outcomes is important. Such findings can inform evidence based policy, interventions, and strategies to minimise the impact on children of adverse experiences and to maximise the family-friendliness of the workforce.

The project combines epidemiology, psychology, immunology, and sociology in the first Australian study of the interconnection between parent work and children’s well-being. One of its innovative features is the use of in-depth interviews with survey and biological data to document stress and immune related changes in family health. The study goes beyond traditional occupational health and safety research which focuses on the effects of work on the employee. And it involves the collection of information from fathers as well as mothers in striving to understand how circumstances at work can ‘come home’ to affect others in the household.