The OeNB regularly supports domestic economic research institutes and research projects as part of the original Jubilee Fund. In the current allocation phase, 12 research projects with around EUR 2.9 million were approved from the Jubilee Fund with the aim of promoting research and teaching tasks in science.

WU Professor Martin Halla has succeeded in obtaining funding for his research project "Are the Alps a Land of Opportunity? Intergenerational Correlation Estimates from Austria" to receive this high-caliber funding.

About the project

The project uses the concept of intergenerational mobility (IgM) to investigate the ability of a society to offer equal opportunities to all its members. Together with Harald Oberhofer (WU Vienna) and Wolfgang Frimmel (JKU Linz), Martin Halla is conducting a comprehensive analysis of IgM in Austria with a focus on earned income and health.

The background is that Austria has a comprehensive social insurance system and generous social benefits, but there is too little systematic evidence on whether these public institutions actually contribute to equality. IgM is a well-developed conceptual framework that measures the intergenerational transmission of inequality and can help to assess the functioning of these institutions.

For the analysis, the researchers use high-quality administrative data, mainly from the established JKU LINZ Data Center. For additional analyses, they draw on the Austrian Micro Data Center of Statistics Austria.

We would like to congratulate Martin Halla and his team on this grant.