Health, Cognition, Family, and Employment among Men

Descripción del proyecto

La salud masculina en una dinámica familiar y laboral en evolución

Los hombres van a la zaga de las mujeres en lo que respecta a educación y participación laboral, mientras que la opción de no tener hijos está aumentando de forma considerable. Los padres se implican cada vez más en el cuidado de los hijos, modificando su papel tradicional. Además, los hombres presentan una mayor tasa de muerte prematura. Sin embargo, la investigación sobre el efecto de estos cambios en la salud y la cognición de los hombres es limitada. El proyecto HOMME, financiado por el Consejo Europeo de Investigación, tiene como objetivo examinar cómo la evolución de la vida familiar y laboral de los hombres afecta a su salud y cognición. Utilizando datos exhaustivos de registros de población noruegos, encuestas e información genética, el proyecto se centrará en la edad adulta joven y la mediana edad, periodos clave marcados por importantes transiciones familiares y laborales. Las principales áreas de investigación incluyen las diferencias entre cohortes y periodos, las responsabilidades laborales y familiares de los hombres, el modelo del proveedor masculino y la participación de los padres en el cuidado de los hijos.

Objetivo

Men are more likely than women to die prematurely, and a great deal of men’s excess mortality is preventable. Improving men’s health and cognition is not only critical for achieving gender equality, but also for enhancing and extending men’s potential to contribute to their families, the labour market and society as populations grow older. HOMME studies how men’s (changing) family and working lives influence their health and cognition. Men’s family and working lives are changing: Men now lag behind women with regards to tertiary education; female labour participation has increased while male labour participation has slightly decreased. Men are more apt to lose their job due to technological change. Male childlessness has risen dramatically, much more than female childlessness; in many Western countries, one out of four or almost one out of three men are now childless at age 40. Fathers are participating more in childcare, and men have partially lost their role as family “breadwinners”. So far, insufficient research has examined the consequences of these changes on men’s health and cognition. HOMME capitalizes on the richness of Norwegian population register, survey, and genetic data to examine how men’s (rapidly changing) family and working lives are related to their health and cognition across adulthood, as well as across cohorts, periods and between communities. We focus on young adulthood and midlife – the life period most characterized by family transitions and work experiences. We examine cohort and period differences, men’s work-face interface, the male breadwinner model and fathers’ participation in childcare, and disentangle selection and causality. Our data covers genes; parents, (former) spouses and partners; self-reported, clinical, and register measures of health; register data on work participation and occupation; and cognitive trajectories of N=12,000+ men between the late teens to ages 36 to 69 (and potentially beyond, pending funding of the project).