Project description
Understanding the health impacts of long commutes
Commuting to work by car or public transportation is inevitable for many. However, long commutes negatively impact partnership stability and family size. A thorough investigation is needed to understand what commuting means for the health of all family members. The ERC-funded COMFAM project aims to investigate the impact of long commutes on commuters’, their partners’ and their children's health and well-being. Moreover, it will examine changes in commuting during and after the COVID-19 pandemic and analyse whether the health effects of long commutes differ across population subgroups. COMFAM will utilise data from Nordic registers, and surveys from Germany, the United Kingdom and the United States. The findings are expected to have significant implications for public health, social well-being, and the economy.
Objective
Passive commuting–regularly recurring travel between home and work by a motorized vehicle or public transportation–is an integral part of our lives. Commuting may take a toll on the health of commuters and their family members. Current research offers a limited understanding of whether commuting’s health impacts are socially patterned. Information about whether long commuting affects family members is scarce. A comprehensive inquiry into this topic is needed to understand what commuting means for population health.
COMFAM’s main objectives are: 1) to investigate the impact of long commutes on commuters’ physical health, 2) to investigate whether long commutes have adverse effects on non-commuting partners’ health and well-being, 3) to assess the effects of parental long commutes on children’s health and social outcomes, 4) to examine whether changes in commuting during and after the COVID-19 pandemic have brought any changes to the health and well-being of the family members, and 5) to examine whether the health effects of long commutes differ across population subgroups, and whether these effects are short- or long-term.
COMFAM is ambitious and highly innovative. It will use high-quality Nordic register data, enabling us to examine comprehensive objective indicators of health, investigate the heterogeneous health effects of long commuting, and employ novel methods to address endogeneity and help establish a causal pattern. We will also leverage rich survey data from the UK, US, and Germany to investigate mechanisms that may underlie commuting-health relationships and assess health declines not yet requiring medical treatment.
COMFAM is also important. In addition to impacting population health, the negative health effects of commuting may reduce employee performance, induce premature exits from the labor force, and set children on problematic trajectories. Thus, the findings will have far-reaching public health, social, and economic implications across nations.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
Funding Scheme
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2023-COG
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Net EU financial contribution. The sum of money that the participant receives, deducted by the EU contribution to its linked third party. It considers the distribution of the EU financial contribution between direct beneficiaries of the project and other types of participants, like third-party participants.
33615 BIELEFELD
Germany
The total costs incurred by this organisation to participate in the project, including direct and indirect costs. This amount is a subset of the overall project budget.