Jósef Sigurdsson receives ERC Starting Grant

About the research project

The prestigious ERC Starting Grants support individual researchers at an early stage of their careers, to build research teams and pursue frontier ideas across all scientific fields.

Associate Professor Jósef Sigurdsson receives the award for his project The Nature and Nurture of Economic Success (SUCCESS). Sigurdsson wants to examine how inherited traits and the environments in which people grow up jointly shape economic outcomes, and how the transmission of advantage changes as societies develops.

Sigurdsson is awarded €1,496,761 for the five-year project:

“I am very happy and honored to receive this grant. It gives me the opportunity to develop a research program around questions I have wanted to study for a long time and to pursue this work together with my collaborators,” he says.

How do nature and nurture interact?

Extensive research within economics has shown that parental time and resources, schools, neighborhoods and public policies can have lasting effects on people’s education and economic success. Less is known about the role of inherited traits—or “nature”—in shaping these outcomes, and especially about how inherited traits and environments interact.

“Rather than asking whether nature or nurture matters more, I want to understand how they work together. Do supportive environments offset differences associated with inherited traits, or do they amplify them?” says Sigurdsson.

The results are likely to have important implications for policy, Sigurdsson continues:

“Policy cannot change the traits children inherit, but it can shape the opportunities available to them. The broader aim is to identify the conditions that help people realize their potential and prevent disadvantage from compounding across generations.”

How does economic development shape social mobility?

Another part of the project takes a long historical perspective. Drawing on rich historical and modern data from Iceland, the research will study families and economic outcomes across many generations. This makes it possible to examine how economic development and social transformation affect the persistence of advantage and opportunities for upward mobility.

“Economic growth transforms the opportunities available to people, but we know much less about whether it also makes societies more mobile. I want to understand when economic development weakens the link between where people come from and where they end up,” says Sigurdsson.