The project is a joint effort between researchers at the University of Uppsala, University of Essex, University of Tampere and University of Turku. The project as a whole examines how recent challenges, such as increased economic uncertainty and ethnic diversity, have affected inequality and support for the welfare state in European countries. It also investigates the work incentives embedded in the existing tax- and benefit systems and how these affect individuals? behaviour, both in the short and in the long run. This information is a crucial input to governments? decisions on how to finance the welfare system and redistribute income while maintaining incentives to work and avoiding poverty traps. The project is divided into three strands. We first measure inequality developments using multidimensional and lifetime perspectives, and assess how different EU tax and benefit systems reduce economic vulnerability. Second, we investigate support for redistribution, asking how ethnic diversity affects people?s support for the welfare state and, using methods from experimental psychology, examining the determinants of redistributive attitudes for different groups. Third, we investigate the work incentives embedded in the existing tax and benefit systems and how these affect individuals? behaviour, both in the short and in the long run, taking into account issues like the complexity of the tax design. The researchers at the University of Turku will contribute mainly to the third strand.

This project aims to answer the following question: how and why do different educational systems, and in particular their various modes of educational tracking and sorting, influence the formation and reproduction of social inequalities over the life course? While previous comparative research has identified effects of tracking on educational inequality, this project goes beyond the state of the art by exploring the underlying mechanisms from a dynamic life-course perspective, and by considering long-term consequences of tracking for final educational attainment and labour market outcomes. The project will focus on both inequality formation in general and inequality dynamics with respect to socioeconomic origin, gender and ethnicity in particular. This will be accomplished in a comparative research framework, comprising six European countries, which represent the prototypes of different tracked and comprehensive educational systems: Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, and the UK. Through a unique effort to harmonize high-quality life-course datasets from each of these countries, the project allows for an identification of differences in the dynamics of inequality formation in different institutional settings. The project will be organised as an international research network. It assembles experts in the field from each participating country, who will pursue an integrated research programme based on innovative methodology. By its novel approach of linking institutional characteristics of educational systems to dynamic processes in inequality formation, the project will make a significant contribution to the state of research and provide highly policy-relevant knowledge.

This innovative project adopts a holistic approach to understanding the dynamics of inequality across the life-course. We analyze how education, labor market and family choices interact to structure accumulated advantage and disadvantage over the life course. Using panel data from five EU countries for over 20 years and cutting-edge statistical methods, including multichannel sequence analysis, we take a comparative approach to exploring how cross-country economic and institutional differences affect inequality outcomes and life courses. Early adulthood is a crucial period of transition where people face multiple choices - about education, jobs, partnerships and childbearing – determining future life. We focus on key turning points, examine their interrelation and explore the cumulative impact on individual and group inequalities. Focusing on transitions during early adulthood, into education, jobs and family formation, we address the following project call themes: “Labor market and family trajectories and the growth of inequality,” “Early adult transitions into tertiary education, vocational training and economic activity” and “Early life influence and outcomes.” The research team of the PI, four CIs, postdoctoral fellows and PGR students will meet regularly and provides appropriate leadership, skills, and capacity building. Academic impact will be achieved by going beyond the state-of-the-art, the research producing new empirical findings and contributing to theory building. Potential for policy impact is high. We will establish early contact with key national and EU stakeholders and engage through meetings, the media, research briefings and social media.

Bullying is a pervasive problem among school-aged youth, with disastrous effects on victims’ psychosocial functioning. The recognition that bullying is a group process has led many interventions to promote peer defending (e.g., standing up against bullies, consoling victims) in the hope that it stops bullying and improves victims’ psychosocial adjustment. Only recently have researchers begun to examine whether victims actually benefit from being defended, and alarming findings emerged in more than half of these studies: being defended was ineffective, or even provoked more bullying and worsened victims’ psychosocial adjustment. How can receiving help pose an additional risk to victims? This project identifies factors that explain and shape the effectiveness of defending in decreasing bullying and promoting victims’ psychosocial adjustment. I propose that the effectiveness of defending may be explained by social-cognitive processes within victims (e.g., learned helplessness, self-blame), and depend upon defender- and victim characteristics (e.g., popularity of defenders, victims’ hostile attribution bias), and classroom factors (e.g., bullying norms). Combining state-of-the-art longitudinal social network analyses with a daily diary design, I will advance a ground-breaking theoretical model of the effects of peer defending on victims, which will be translated into urgently needed practical guidelines for anti-bullying interventions.

This research project examines how recent challenges, such as increased economic uncertainty and ethnic diversity, have affected inequality and support for the welfare state in European countries. It also investigates the work incentives embedded in the existing tax- and benefit systems and how these affect individuals? behaviour, both in the short and in the long run. This information is a crucial input to governments? decisions on how to finance the welfare system and redistribute income while maintaining incentives to work and avoiding poverty traps. The project is divided into three strands. We first measure inequality developments using multidimensional and lifetime perspectives, and assess how different EU tax and benefit systems reduce economic vulnerability. Second, we investigate support for redistribution, asking how ethnic diversity affects people?s support for the welfare state and, using methods from experimental psychology, examining the determinants of redistributive attitudes for different groups. Third, we investigate the work incentives embedded in the existing tax and benefit systems and how these affect individuals? behaviour, both in the short and in the long run, taking into account issues like the complexity of the tax design. The research will produce academically meritorious publications and highly policy relevant guidance on reforms to the redistributive side of the welfare state. The research will use comparative micro data across European countries and detailed register data from individual countries. The project unites economists, political scientists, sociologists and psychologists with extensive experience advising governments and the EC on policy design.