Martina Beretta, a DPhil student in the Department of Social Policy and Intervention, has been selected to receive the prestigious Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy research grant in the social sciences for the 2023-2024 award year. Martina is among the 20 selected scholars who received the grant for her work addressing contemporary social sciences issues.
Receiving recognition for her research project, '"Great Gatsby Curve" in Europe: Is there a (inverse) relationship between inequality and social mobility?', the project aimed to assess the association between socio-economic inequality and intergenerational social mobility in Europe and its underlying mechanisms.
The approach, diverging from conventional methods reliant on income-based measures, is truly innovative. Martina leveraged the theoretical foundations of social class, seen as deriving from employment relations, to develop a new measure of inequality from Eurostat's large-sample datasets and estimate mobility using innovative models.
In addition, Martina explores how inequality may reshape parental resources and concerns about their children’s mobility prospects, influencing educational choices and labour market outcomes for the next generation.
Martina shared, "I am honoured to receive the Horowitz Foundation award, especially considering all the worthy candidates. I am also sincerely grateful to my supervisor, Erzsébet Bukodi, for her unwavering support throughout my DPhil journey."
Ayse Akincigil, Chairman of the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy, said, "This year we received 771 applications, continuing the high number of quality applications of previous years. The awards are competitive, the twenty applicants receiving awards this year represent less than 3 per cent of those who applied. Although many of the proposals were on topics of social and political importance, the Foundation's Trustees consider these proposals to be particularly strong and vibrant examples of how policy research can help meet the challenges of today's complex society."
