October 04, 2023 | News | New faces at MPIDR

Welcome, Amanda Martins de Almeida!

Amanda Martins de Almeida joins the researchgroup "Kinship Inequalities" at MPIDR. © MPIDR/Schulz

The Max Planck Institut for Demographic Research (MPIDR) welcomes Amanda Martins de Almeida from Brazil to the team. Amanda has a master in Demography by the Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil, CEDEPLAR (Center for Regional Development and Planning).The title of her master thesis was “Educational Expansion and Health among Adults in Brazil”. She analyzed the differences in within and between educational groups in Brazil, in the context of educational expansion. Amanda also is a former student of the European Doctoral School of Demography (EDSD). She participated in the last cohort hosted at CED in Barcelona. Her EDSD thesis was on “Children’s educational attainment and parental mortality in Chile”.

What is your job at MPIDR?
I am a PhD student in the Kinship Inequalities research group for the next three years. My current interests include intergenerational transfers of human capital and health (from adult children to parents), family structures, and formal demography. During my PhD, I will focus on quantifying intergenerational transfers using a kinship demographic framework. This will include deriving measures of kin availability by educational attainment groups in Latin America and other developing countries. I will also work on incorporating a health component into models of kinship and life expectancy.

What is your motivation to work in this field of research?
As part of the first generation in my family to attend university, my first motivation was to observe how changes in the distribution of education can affect intergenerational transfers and social mobility. Also, as part of a country that struggles with a certain lack of data, my second motivation is to approach measures that can be applied to data from low- and middle-income countries. 

Why did you choose MPIDR as your new employer?
I had the opportunity to do the EDSD preparatory courses at MPIDR in 2022 and I really enjoyed the institute. I chose MPIDR because it is one of the leading institutes in demography, it does high quality research, and I had the opportunity to join a group focused on kinship inequalities.

Where are you from? What do you miss most about home (and maybe: what don’t you miss at all)?
I am Brazilian and I miss my family and Brazilian food a lot, especially the common dishes to have with coffee, like broa (corn bread).  And I don`t miss the traffic and needing a car to go to work or university, I really enjoy talking a walk in the morning to the institute.

What is your favorite and what is your least favorite part about work?
My favorite thing is the interaction with people from different backgrounds, academically speaking, but also culturally. This brings valuable discussions and reflections to my research.