Towards well-informed decisions: Predicting long-term effects of policy reforms on life trajectories

In today’s complex society, with intricate and multiple levels of policy making, it is often difficult to foresee how policy reforms and interventions could come to affect the lives of individuals and the future of their families. It is imperative that we reach a better understanding of the mechanisms that connect policy changes with individuals’ life trajectories.

The goal of the PREDLIFE project is to understand how complex and interdependent life paths unfold over time and how these trajectories are shaped by policy interventions and reforms. In the statistics subproject we are developing statistical tools for modelling, predicting, and visualizing how policy interventions affect complex social processes. In the sociology subproject we use high-quality register data covering the full populations of Finland and Sweden to better understand the interplay of work and family over the life course and the impacts of parental leave policies on couples’ life trajectories. We are especially interested in the causes and consequences of fathers’ parental leave uptake.

PREDLIFE is funded by the Academy of Finland in 2020–2024 and is carried out at the University of Turku and University of Jyväskylä.

Read more here and follow @PREDLIFEproject on Twitter.