Postgraduate studies help in outlining your research themes
I got interested in research work right at the beginning of my career at the research services of Statistics Finland, where I compiled register-based research data for economists. Before applying for postgraduate studies, I also worked in a research unit at Kela. I decided that I wanted to do this work in the future, so I applied for a doctoral programme in economics.
Like many other recently graduated students, I did not think I would study any further after getting my master’s degree. However, I got interested in research work right at the beginning of my career at the research services of Statistics Finland, where I compiled register-based research data for economists, for example, and maintained various microsimulation models.
Before applying for postgraduate studies, I fortunately worked also as a researcher in a research unit of Kela. After gaining some experience from practical research work, I decided that I wanted to do this work in the future.
I am working as a senior researcher at Kela and also as a project researcher at Ã…bo Akademi in the FLUX consortium, where we study changes in birthrates and family formations.
Postgraduate studies came later
It was only later, after having been in working life for some time, that I started to seriously consider going for postgraduate studies. I pondered between economics and demography, as both offer diverse tools for answering different research questions. In economics, I was most interested in econometric methods and applications focused on causal logic.
I ended up applying for a doctoral programme in economics at the Jyväskylä University School of Business and Economics, where I started in 2018, five years after completing my master’s degree in statistics.
Take full advantage of your studies by applying what you learn in practice
Working on the doctoral studies alongside my job was challenging. The courses in economics were complex and mathematically oriented. In a week, the exercises for a single course might take up to twenty hours or more to complete.
Surprisingly, the first statistics course I had completed at university, matrix computation, was one of the most useful courses in my postgraduate studies. My other earlier studies in statistics and mathematics proved useful. After all, studying was rewarding and especially the econometrics courses have been useful later in my research career.
My advice is that if you can focus on your studies on a full-time basis, take full advantage of them. Courses are most useful if you can think of practical applications at the same time. Methodology and specialisation courses provide a good basis for timely research and can also help you discover good research themes and settings.
Courses are most useful if you can think of practical applications at the same time.
My dissertation topic arose from themes in my own job
I completed my doctoral degree in autumn 2023, but before that the topic of my dissertation had changed from the original one. At the end of my postgraduate studies, my own interests, research themes and research plan guidelines as well as gaps in earlier research started gradually to take shape.
The final topic of my doctoral dissertation, how childcare subsidies influence the choices families make, developed along the way as part of my work in the research unit of Kela. I am still working on the same themes, such as how childcare subsidies impact differences in pay between genders and on parents’ health and working-life status.
