Gaia Spolverini is a new postdoc researcher of the Global Migration Center who will work on the project: The Longitudinal Impact of Crises on Economic, Social, and Mobility-Related Outcomes: The Role of Gender, Skills, and Migration Status under the supervision of Martina Viarengo.
In her thesis, Topics on Culture and Family Economics, defended on July 16 2024, Gaia Spolverini explores the historical determinants and socioeconomic effects of cultural traits and family structure. Chapter 1 examines the positive association between intergenerational coresidence and Covid-19 mortality rates among the elderly in U.S. counties. Chapter 2 documents that women living with elderly parents historically had lower fertility rates compared to those in nuclear families, a pattern explained by a theoretical model showing that resource allocation within families affects fertility decisions. Chapter 3 investigates the origins of social capital in individualistic-prone environment sin the American frontier expansion context, finding that higher weather variability, plausibly exogenous variation for cooperative behavior, reduces the returns to individualism and promotes larger religious communities.
Gaia Spolverini holds a PhD in Economics from Université catholique de Louvain, Belgium. During her PhD, she was invited researcher at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA). Her research interests span economic history, demography and culture economics. In parallel, she has also ongoing projects about fitness and sustainability.
Publications:
Pensieroso, Luca, Alessandro Sommacal, and Gaia Spolverini. "Intergenerational coresidence and the Covid-19 pandemic in the United States." Economics & Human Biology 49 (2023): 101230.
Grants:
- Aspirant Scholarship (1st classified in the French-speaking region of Belgium), Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique (2020-2024)
- Wallonie-Bruxelles International World (WBI.World) Excellence Mobility Grant