Experts

I am a professor in VIVE's Health and Later Life department. I study how advantages and disadvantages accumulate over a life, from the circumstances of the childhood home to how long people live. My work relies on the Danish registers, which allow researchers to follow entire cohorts from birth to death and link them to parents, siblings, and employers. A recurring lesson is that the obvious comparison often points the wrong way: what looks harmful can be beneficial, and inequality that looks modest can be large.

Jens-Peter Thomsen's main research interest lies within the areas of social stratification and the sociology of education, with a main focus on the later educational transitions of young people. He is particularly interested in how socialization processes, child-rearing techniques and educational strategies in families with different cultural, social and economic resources shape educational opportunities. He uses a mix of quantitative and qualitative methods.