The new podcast "Exzellent erklärt" interviews Pia Pinger and Matthias Sutter: "Educational opportunities - what role the parental home plays" (in German)

57 clusters of excellence, 1 podcast. On a regular basis, "Exzellent erklärt" reports from one of the research clusters that receive funding under the Excellence Strategy of the German federal and state governments.

In the current episode, part of the work of the Cluster of Excellence "ECONtribute: Markets & Public Policy" is presented.

Prof. Pia Pinger herself was surprised by the extent to which some children were left behind by the pandemic. For these, it is particularly difficult to reconnect - but even without a rampant disease, the opportunity for education in Germany is not the same for every child. Success at school is largely related to the parental home, and not only to whether parents earn a lot, but also to what academic background they themselves have.

Prof. Matthias Sutter's most recent study also found that prosociality, i.e. positive social behavior, has become less prevalent among teenagers as a result of the pandemic. Especially among those teenagers who live in a household with a low socioeconomic status and in families where one member has contracted SARS-CoV2.

What can we do to help children, no matter what family background they come from?

 

The experts

The economist Prof. Dr. Pia Pinger is a professor at the Faculty of Economics at the University of Cologne. Prior to her junior professorship at the University of Bonn, she completed her doctorate at the University of Mannheim in 2013. Her research focuses, among other things, on the emergence of human capital and socioeconomic inequalities.
https://econtribute.de/de/people/prof-pia-pinger/

Economist Prof. Dr. Matthias Sutter is director of the Max Planck Institute for the Study of Common Goods in Bonn and part-time professor of experimental economics at the Universities of Cologne and Innsbruck. He studied economics in Innsbruck and received his PhD in 1999. Before taking over the director position at the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods in 2017, he worked as a professor in Florence (EUI), Innsbruck and Cologne.
https://econtribute.de/de/people/prof-dr-matthias-sutter/