This year's best poster award went to Alessandro Ferrara for his presentation on
The impact of parental health shocks on well-being and development in early adulthood: Evidence from Germany
Alessandro Ferrara is a post-doctoral researcher at the Free University (FU) and Social Science Centre (WZB) in Berlin. He is part of a research project investigating the interaction between migration and health (MIGRAH) sponsored by the Berlin University Alliance (BUA). He holds a PhD in Social and Political Sciences from the European University Institute in Florence and has worked as a consultant for the OECD at the Directorate of Education and Skills. His research focuses on social stratification, migration, and educational and health inequalities. He also has an interest in the measurement of non-cognitive skills and their role in stratification processes.
The research presented in the poster was conducted with Jan Paul Heisig from the Berlin Social Science Center (WZB) and Jonas Radl from the Universidad Carlos III de Madrid (UC3M).
It focuses on the impacts of parental illness on children’s well-being and cognitive as well as non-cognitive development. The study uses data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (GSOEP) to examine the effects of parental health shocks on young adults aged 17-25. It explores a wide range of outcomes, including well-being, mental health, non-cognitive skills, personality traits, and educational attainment, and consider various parental health shocks, such as extended hospitalization, cancer, stroke, and depression. In terms of identification, it addresses some unobserved family-level confounding by comparing unexposed and exposed siblings. First results reveal detrimental effects of parental health shocks on life satisfaction, primarily driven by maternal illness and most pronounced among socioeconomically advantaged children. The research does not find evidence of shocks influencing more stable personality traits.