Income and work have been observed to be drivers of health and health inequities for millennia. Yet within these broad observations, we see contexts and places develop where income and work matter more or less for health, providing clues to the mechanisms through which they operate, and giving windows of opportunity for small and large scale changes to improve social well being and health. In his talk, Professor Rehkopf will describe findings on how and why income and work matter for health in the current context of the U.S., how these observations can guide efforts to improve health and wellbeing, but also how proximal intervention results can misleads us, motivating a life course, intergenerational and contextual approach to understanding the ways in which income and work become embodied.