rEUsilience researcher Max Thaning from Stockholm University is honoured to have received a generous grant from the Swedish Research Council ‘Forte’ to support his project, Origins and Opportunities. This research aims to investigate how increasing income inequalities in childhood affect educational opportunities as children progress through life. By examining data over time within Sweden and comparing across welfare regimes—particularly between Scandinavia and the United States—the project seeks to uncover patterns and explanations of the relation between educational mobility and economic inequality. Such a relation can potentially serve as a mechanism in a broader causal chain on how inequalities across generations are linked and (re)produced.
This project builds on insights from the work developed in the rEUsilience project, where family dynamics and resilience are central. Social mobility and intergenerational inequality evolve within families, each of which faces diverse conditions as well as unique constraints and opportunities. In sum, his intention is to apply these insights to explore how family origins situated in varying degrees of economic inequalities influence children’s educational opportunities.
The rEUsilience project will conclude in the summer of 2025 and we are very pleased that Max will be able to take forward our learnings in his future valuable work in this area.