Viveca Östberg

Viveca Östberg is a sociologist focussing on health among young people. Her research deals with the influence of social structure and social conditions on health among children and youth. She has published studies on health inequalities by parental education, social class and income. Other studies concern the association between school conditions and health complaints. Here, the focus has been on school as a work environment and as a social arena (e.g. status hierarchies, friendship, bullying). Another area of interest has been the so-called Nordic welfare research where two important questions have been how children's welfare can be described and how information can be collected. In line with this she has worked with the development of Swedish welfare surveys for children and adolescents (Child-LNU and Child-ULF) where representative samples in the ages 10-18 years have been interviewed about their living conditions.