Contacts

FRAILIFE: Child Disability and Family Life


 

Grant: ERC Starting Grant, €1.4 million

Principal Investigator: Prof. Nicoletta Balbo

Period: 2023-2028
 

 

Across the European Union, approximately 4% among individuals under age 16 have a disability, and over 15 million school-age children are known to have special educational needs. Disabilities limit children in their everyday activities and impact families in myriad ways. FRAILIFE aims to comprehensively analyze the effects of a child disability on family members – parents, siblings, and grandparents – in Europe, using high-quality data (registers, surveys, social media), innovative research designs and methods. By focusing on the impact of child disability on family members’ life course trajectories, health outcomes, and social participation, FRAILIFE speaks to both general family processes and the special case of Europe’s frailest families. 

The existing literature on families with a disabled child is scattered, built on small convenience samples, and often focused on a specific disease; the findings are inconclusive and non-generalizable. FRAILIFE elevates the evidentiary standard by: i) using a population approach, which compares families with and without a disabled child and provides opportunities to uncover heterogeneous effects; ii) going beyond simple associations between child disability and family outcomes to establish causal pathways, identify underlying mechanisms, and uncover causal effects; iii) investigating both short- and long-term consequences of child disability on families; iv) adopting a comparative perspective to uncover the moderating effects of institutions and culture. Beyond the specific insights about the networked consequences of disability, this project contributes to the field of family demography, as the analysis of extremely frail families has relevance for the general functioning of all families facing adverse events. FRAILIFE will bring families with a disabled child out of their invisibility, offering new and important insights on their functioning, characteristics, and challenges, while informing effective family-centered policy.

 

 

This website area is part of a project that has received funding from the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Horizon Europe research and innovation programme
(Grant agreement No. 101077533)


 

Research Team

Nicoletta Balbo - PI

Nicoletta Balbo is the Principal Investigator of the FRALIFE project and Associate Professor of Sociology at the Social and Political Sciences Department, Bocconi University. She is also Research Fellow at the DONDENA Centre for Research on Social Dynamics and Public Policy. Her research interests focus on sociology of the family, life course, fertility decision-making, health behaviors and disability. Her research is therefore at the intersection between sociology, demography and public health. Nicoletta has published in leading demographic and sociological journals, such as Demography and American Sociological Review.

About

Silvia Palmaccio - Postdoc

Silvia Palmaccio joined the FRAILIFE team in October 2024 as a full-time postdoctoral researcher. She holds a Ph.D. in Economics from KU Leuven, Belgium, and is an affiliated researcher at KU Leuven and University of Turin. Her research interests lie at the intersection of family and education economics.

About

External Team Members

Alice Dominici

Alice Dominici is an Assistant Professor of Economics at IMT Lucca, and a Research Affiliate at Bocconi University, Dondena Centre.

About

Lara Bister

Lara Bister is a research fellow in the Research Group Health and Social Inequality at the WZB and at the Einstein Center Population Diversity, and a Research Affiliate at Bocconi University, Dondena Centre.

About

Elena Neri

Elena Neri is a DPhil (PhD) candidate in Sociology at the University of Oxford (Nuffield College) and an affiliate student at the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research. Her research focuses on child disability and life course transitions from childhood to early adulthood.

About

Chiara Guasti

Chiara Guasti is a PhD candidate in Sociology at the European University Institute in Florence, where she is working on the assimilation of migrants' fertility and the effect of their social networks. Her interests include social demography, social capital & social networks.

About

Project Results

Wörn, Jonathan, Nicoletta Balbo, Karsten Hank, and Øystein Kravdal. “The temporal alignment of mental health consultations across family members: A study of Norwegian adolescents, their parents, and siblings.” Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology. (2024). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-024-02803-1

Balbo, Nicoletta, and Danilo Bolano. "Child disability as a family issue: a study on mothers’ and fathers’ health in Italy." European Journal of Public Health 34, no. 1 (2024): 79-84. https://doi.org/10.1093/eurpub/ckad168

  1. EAPS Working group Child & Adolescent Development Webinar, May 5, 2023. Balbo N. Child Disability and Family Life.
  2. SPS conference on Global Challenges, Napoli, June 15, 2023. Balbo N. Child Disability and Family Life.
  3. Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research Seminar Series, MPDR, Rostock, Germany, June 28, 2023. Balbo N. Child Disability and Family Life.
  4. 2023 Research Celebration Day, Bocconi University, Milan, Italy, November 29, 2023. Balbo N. Child Disability and Family Life.
  5. GENPOP Seminar Series, Bologna, March 7, 2024. Balbo N. Child Disability and Parents' Life.
  6. Annual Conference of the German Society for Demography (DGD) and the Nordic Demographic Societies, March 20-22 2024, Hamburg (Germany). Bister, L. A new framework to identify individuals with a disability using linked individual-level register data. Invited Presentation.
  7. Population American Association Conference 2024, April 17-20 2024, Columbus (Ohio). Neri, E. Understanding the relationship between child disability and political attitudes: is religion important?
  8. Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America (PAA), April 17-20 2024, Columbus (USA). Poster session. Bister, L. Life course outcomes of individuals who grew up with a sibling with a disability.
  9. Annual Meeting of the Population Association of America (PAA), April 17-20 2024, Columbus (USA). Poster session. Dominici, A. Disability and life expectancy over the XXth century: the role of culture
  10. Population American Association Conference 2024, April 17-20 2024, Columbus (Ohio). Balbo N. Teenage Mental Health Problems and the Co-Development of Parent and Sibling Mental Health
  11. Annual Finnish Social Psychology Conference, May 16-17 2024, Helsinki (FI). Neri E. Behind close doors: child disability and family members' social well-being. 
  12. European Population Conference 2024, EAPS Masterclass ‘Families and Child Development and Well-being’, June 2024, Edinburgh (UK). Bister, L. A new framework to identify individuals with a disability using linked individual-level register data.
  13. European Population Conference (EPC), June 12-15 2024, Edinburgh (UK). Poster session. Bister, L. Life course outcomes of individuals who grew up with a sibling with a disability.
  14. European Population Conference (EPC), June 12-15 2024, Edinburgh (UK). Poster session. Dominici, A. Disability and life expectancy over the XXth century: the role of culture
  15. European Population Conference 2024, June 12-15 2024, Edinburgh, Scotland, UK. Balbo N. Teenage Mental Health Problems and the Co-Development of Parent and Sibling Mental Health
  16. Biannual Conference of the European Society of Health and Medical Sociology (ESHMS), July 2-5 2024, Antwerp (Belgium). Bister, L. Life course outcomes of individuals who grew up with a sibling with a disability.
  17. Annual Conference of the European Consortium for Sociological Research (ECSR), September 12-14 2024, Barcelona (Spain). Bister, L. Life course outcomes of individuals who grew up with a sibling with a disability.