Ingrid van Dijk’s research examines long term trends in health inequality in The Netherlands and abroad. She is particularly interested in intergenerational change. Inequality is passed down from parent to child. We know that a difficult start in life affects children throughout their lives and can, for example, lead to poorer health and worse socioeconomic outcomes in adulthood. But at the same time, over the past few centuries we have started living much longer – and in much better health. How has inequality developed over the long run, and how is parent’s and children’s health related, both in the past and today? How can we use intergenerational links to say something about equal opportunities for a long life, and about developments over time and differences between countries? Institutions, policy and economic development also influence health equity and intergenerational effects across the life course – comparative research over time and across populations is therefore very important.
I want to use existing data in new ways to conduct comparative research into health trends. We know too little about how health inequalities have developed in the long term and what role socio-economic factors play. In addition, I want to digitise new sources about health improvements and make them accessible for research.
About Ingrid van Dijk
Prof. Dr Ingrid K. van Dijk (1989, Groningen) began her academic career at Radboud University, where she obtained a Bachelor’s degree in 2012 and a Master’s degree in Sociology in 2014. She then began her PhD programme in the Department of History, where she investigated intergenerational effects on health and mortality in 19th-century Zeeland. In 2019, she obtained her PhD with her thesis, “Death and the Family. High mortality families and the life course, The Netherlands, 1812–1912.”
After completing her PhD, she moved to Lund University in Sweden, where she has worked for the past seven years successively as a postdoctoral researcher, assistant professor (biträdande lektor) and associate professor (lektor). There, she was also appointed Docent, comparable to a German habitation. She leads several major research projects in the fields of demography, life courses and intergenerational social processes.
In 2024, van Dijk received an ERC Starting Grant for a project on which she and her team in Nijmegen will be working until 2031: “Relative Health: Long-Run Inequalities in Health and Survival Between Families and Across Generations”. The project focuses on long-term trends and differences between countries in health inequality. She is seeking to develop new ways of measuring trends in health inequality from a comparative family perspective. Further information about van Dijk’s projects can be found on her personal website.