Anna Baranowska-Rataj

Anna Baranowska-Rataj serves as Professor in Population Studies at Umeå University's Centre for Demographic and Ageing Research (CEDAR), where she leads the ERC-funded HEALFAM project investigating unemployment's health spillovers within families. Her work bridges sociology, economics, and public health through rigorous causal inference methodologies applied to Swedish register data.

Her research focuses on labor market-family-health interdependencies, examining how economic shocks like unemployment propagate through family systems across life stages. Key themes include intergenerational transmission of disadvantage, welfare policy moderation effects, and gendered labor market dynamics, with particular attention to mental health outcomes and policy interventions.

Recent publications (2022-2024) reveal a concentrated research trajectory analyzing unemployment effects from multiple angles:

• Parental job loss impacts on adolescent wellbeing and infant health
• Partner unemployment consequences for relationship quality and mental health
• Adult children's unemployment effects on aging parents
• Structural factors like trade unions and regional economies enabling wage mobility

Methodologically, her work leverages longitudinal register data with advanced causal designs to isolate policy-relevant mechanisms.

Her scientific recognition includes the prestigious ERC Starting Grant for the HEALFAM project. Current research projects span cognitive consequences of social frailty (2022-2025), work-family dynamics in advanced economies (2021-2025), and life course impacts of teenage parenthood (2019-2021).

As principal investigator of the HEALFAM project, she directs a multidisciplinary team examining how unemployment triggers mental and physical health deterioration within families. Her work informs European social policy debates, recently highlighted in university publications regarding Swedish infants' resilience to parental unemployment and dual-earner households' protective effects against depressive symptoms.