Studying work across the life course: what quantitative data can tell us

Bio:

Vendula Machů holds a Master's in Social Epidemiology from Charles University in Prague. Before starting her PhD at the University of Groningen, she worked at the National Institute of Mental Health, contributing to psychiatric care reform projects in Czechia. Her PhD research examined the link between work, parenthood, and mental health during young adulthood from a life course perspective. Since February 2025, she has worked as a postdoctoral researcher at the Department of Health Sciences of the University Medical Centre Groningen, focusing on projects related to work transitions into retirement and the inclusion of first-generation medical students.

Research on decent work benefits from multiple approaches to understanding people’s working lives. In this talk, I show how quantitative data can reveal broader patterns in work and family trajectories across the life course. Using two types of data (a longitudinal cohort study and Dutch administrative register data), I examined key transitions in working lives, from school-to-work and work–family trajectories among young adults to pathways into retirement at later ages. Rather than focusing on single outcomes, the analyses examine the timing and duration of various life events and study the accumulation of advantages and disadvantages over time. The presentation discusses what quantitative data can tell us about stability and inequality in working lives, as well as their limitations in fully capturing the concept of decent work.

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