Decades of social science research has shown that a high quality of working life involves more than having a sufficient wage that is reasonably secure. The nature of the work itself also matters. However, little is known about how the quality of working life – defined multidimensionally including both economic and intrinsic aspects of work – is structured in the labour market.
We are a group of academic researchers mapping how occupation – one’s field of work – relates to the quality of working life in Britain by analysing decades of large-scale survey data. The project is funded by the Economic and Social Research Council’s Secondary Data Analysis Initiative.
Key research questions
- What is the structure of ‘occupational quality’?
- How does occupational quality influence individuals’ subjective wellbeing over the life course?
- Is mobility across the occupational quality structure an effective means of improving the quality of working life?
- To what extent does the workplace moderate the effect of occupational quality?