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When I was finishing up my junior year of college, I knew that I wanted to continue in my education, and I knew that I wanted to study welfare policies and their implementation. As the U.S. does not have many welfare initiatives or education in welfare policies, I knew I would have to look abroad, and my first thought was to look at Finland. All I knew about Finland at the time was that it was the happiest country in the world, many years running, and it had an expansive welfare state which drew me in.

When looking at Finland, I found the program in Inequalities, Interventions, and New Welfare State at the University of Turku, saw that they were studying the welfare state and its many facets, and knew this is where I wanted to spend my next few years!

At the University of Turku, I have studied welfare states in a comparative nature, learned quantitative methods of analysis on policies and social phenomena, and focused on inequality across numerous areas, with an emphasis on how inequality persists across generations and dimensions.

My master’s thesis focused specifically on income inequality and studied income inequality and the effect of economic shocks in the United States between 1965 and 2020. In the thesis, I parsed through the effects of age, period, and birth cohort on levels of income inequality. My supervisors studied income inequality using these age, period, and cohort methods in Finland, and I sought to compare the Finnish economic landscape with the one in America, using similar methods and a similar research design.

In the U.S., the findings indicated that younger individuals and younger cohorts hold the greatest income disadvantage, with early entrants into the labor force having a significant disadvantage in earnings and not reaching an advantaged position until spending almost fifteen years in the labor market, and younger cohorts’ earnings demonstrating a negative trend towards greater levels of income inequality.

I have wrapped up my thesis and coursework, and this semester I have been interning at the Finnish Institute for Health and Welfare, working within a project on childhood mental health outcomes. My research specifically focuses on the way childhood mental health conditions affect educational attainment and early adulthood outcomes. I am presenting my research in May at the INVEST Conference at the University of Turku.

As my time in Finland winds down, I am looking forward to my next adventure. I will be beginning my PhD in Public Policy at the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill where I will be studying welfare rhetoric in the U.S. and bringing my experience in Finland with me to help seek new ideas for welfare implementation back at home!