Cohort profile: the Danish Work Life Course Cohort study (DaWCo)

PURPOSE: The Danish Work Life Course Cohort (DaWCo) was initiated to study relations between working conditions, health and labour market affiliation using repeated measures of these factors throughout the working life, while accounting for health-differences pre-existing labour market entry. PARTICIPANTS: The cohort encompasses all 15–30-year-old individuals residing in Denmark who entered the labour market during the years 1995–2009 (960 562 individuals and 7 136 188 observations). Data include information on working conditions measured by job exposure matrices linked with registers on health, labour market affiliation and sociodemographics for both the cohort members and their parents. The median age at cohort entry was 20 years and men and women were equally represented. FINDINGS TO DATE: Currently, one study has been published, which found that low job control was associated with increased risk of depressive disorder, independently from indicators of socioeconomic position measured throughout the life-course. The present cohort profile presents data regarding the transitions of cohort members between states of labour market affiliation and data on health services use. All cohort members were employed in their year of entry, but this proportion decreased across the years to 82.4% in the 10th year since cohort entry. The proportion of students peaked at 5 years since cohort entry with 13.9%. FUTURE PLANS: This large prospective cohort offers the possibility to study associations between psychosocial working conditions and rare outcomes and to examine the potential accumulation of effects while accounting for health-differences pre-existing labour market entry. Currently, we are working on analyses on risk of hospital-diagnosed incident depression and disability pensioning. The study is ongoing, and we are planning to extend the study to include the years 2010–2018 and expand the cohort with individuals entering the Danish workforce during these years.