The share of young people with temporary work contracts has increased substantially in the Netherlands in the last decade. Alongside this rise in temporary contracts, young adults have postponed steps toward adulthood and their well-being has declined. Whereas previous research often focuses on one life domain, this project studies how these different aspects of young adult life are related. The guiding question this project aims to answer is: To what extent do temporary contracts affect young people’s living situations, relationships, and well-being?
In 2022, Lonneke van den Berg received the Instituut Gak-KNAW award to fund this research project. This project makes innovations on previous research by taking a life-course perspective, studying the role of parental support, and by examining the role of welfare state support. It studies questions such as: Does the impact of temporary contract changes over the young adult life course? Does parental support help young people with temporary contracts? And does welfare support weaken the negative effects of temporary contracts? By studying these questions, this project offers insight in the role of temporary contracts for young adults’ transition to adulthood, which groups of young people are struggling more than others, and what role policy could play.
This project studies these questions using longitudinal register data of all young Dutch people and longitudinal panel data of various countries.
