Barbara Zimmer

The effects of atypical employment on mental and physical well-being during the course of life

The life course research has increasingly gained importance within the social science research in the past years. With the shift from an industrial to a service-oriented society, the partial casualization and the perforation of employment relationships, the question how life courses of individuals change is being raised more and more. Upon increasing diversifications and transitions in the working life, the attention has also to be drawn to their consequences and their social safeguarding. Scientific researches already indicate that certain risks accumulate with the course of life and thus strengthen existing inequalities between social groups.

Within the scope of the dissertation project, and on the basis of the Socio-Economic Panel, career histories of atypical employees are to be connected to their courses of health status. The main focus here is to be on the strain factors of atypical employment relationships: job insecurity, lacking autonomy or lacking range of work activities, as well as missing cooperation and communication possibilities.

In a second step, it is to be examined in how far effective and health-promoting measures and actions exist for atypical employees at company level in order to minimize the individual risk factors in life courses.


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