2 RESEARCH GRANTS FOR THE “DONDENA” RESEARCH CENTER OF UNIVERSITA’ COMMERCIALE “LUIGI BOCCONI”

Across the European Union, approximately 4% of all individuals under the age of 16 have a disability, and over 15 million school-age children are known to have special educational needs. Disabilities limit children in their everyday activities and impact families in a myriad of ways. Our FRAILIFE project aims to comprehensively analyze the effects of a child’s disability on family members – parents, siblings, and grandparents – in Europe, using high-quality data (registers, surveys, social media), innovative research designs and methods. By focusing on the impact of child disability on family members’ life course trajectories, health outcomes, and social participation, FRAILIFE speaks to both general family processes and the special case of Europe’s frailest families. The existing literature on families with a disabled child is scattered, built on small convenience samples, and often focused on a specific disease; the findings are inconclusive and non-generalizable. FRAILIFE elevates the evidentiary standard by: i) using a population approach, which compares families with and without a disabled child and provides opportunities to uncover heterogeneous effects; ii) going beyond simple associations between child disability and family outcomes to establish causal pathways, identify underlying mechanisms, and uncover causal effects; iii) investigating both short- and longterm consequences of child disability on families; iv) adopting a comparative perspective to uncover the moderating effects of institutions and culture. Beyond the specific insights about the networked consequences of disability, this project contributes to the field of family demography, as the analysis of extremely frail families has relevance for the general functioning of all families facing adverse events. FRAILIFE will bring families with a disabled child out of their invisibility, offering new and important insights on their functioning, characteristics, needs and challenges, while informing effective family-centered policy.

We are looking for two social scientists with a PhD (or near to completion) in demography, sociology, economics, or statistics/data science who can systematically analyze child disability and life course dynamics. They must be able to work with large scale population registers or survey data (e.g. MCS, Pairfam, GSOEP) to analyze the relationship and the causal link between child disability and family members (i.e., parents, siblings, grandparents).The candidates must have an excellent command of English, solid quantitative skills, familiarity with statistical packages such as R and Stata, experience in scientific writing and a strong command of systemizing and analysis of large and complex registers and survey data.

The Research Grant will last 24 months (with the possibility of extension) and indicatively run from 1st January 2025.

If you are interested, please apply at https://jobmarket.unibocconi.eu/?id=695 by 8th December 2024.