Mathieu Steijn of VU School of Business and Economics has been awarded a Veni research grant by the Dutch Research Council (NWO). Steijn studies how local meeting places, from the sports club to the community centre, shape the life chances of children from low-income families.
Inequality of opportunity is growing. Whether a child moves up in life depends heavily on their social connections. Research and policy tend to focus on which demographic groups live side by side in a neighbourhood. But social ties are not built by living together; they are built by coming together. That is why Steijn, Lecturer in Urban Economics, shifts the focus to a neighbourhood's social infrastructure: the places where people meet, such as sports clubs, community centres and libraries.
In his research, Steijn maps out these places where people from different socioeconomic backgrounds primarily come together. His aim is to understand how these encounters shaped the social mobility of earlier generations, and to translate those insights into ways of improving the prospects of generations to come.
Steijn: “This grant comes at just the right time. Inequality of opportunity is growing, and we now know that the neighborhood where someone grows up plays a major role in this, making it a promising policy target. However, we do not yet fully understand what exactly makes the difference in these neighborhoods. With this project, we can gain deeper insight into this and formulate more effective policies.”
About the Veni grant
The NWO Veni grant, worth up to 320,000 euros, is awarded to recently graduated researchers with an excellent research proposal. It gives them three years to develop their own ideas and encourages curiosity-driven, innovative research.