Not only can work cause illness and disability (causation), but illness and disability can also alter individuals’ labour market success (selection). Building on a theoretical model that accounts for the interdependent pathways between work and health throughout the lifecourse, our project will pursue three overarching goals. Firstly, we will identify gender-OC-patterns and trends of inequalities in mortality and ill-health. Secondly, we will explain the underlying mechanisms that link health and work dynamically through a number of empirical case studies, starting with disabling work injuries. And lastly, we will explore the promises and pitfalls of medico-administrative big data to advance knowledge in these fields. We will use a novel and unique source of longitudinal data, the EDP-Santé, combining demographic, socio-economic, and work characteristics with health care consumption and causes of death on a large representative sample of the French population.