Across the world, more than 240 million children live with disabilities, conditions that profoundly impact not only their own lives but also the lives of their family members. Yet, the broader social and demographic consequences of childhood disability on families remain largely invisible in both academic research and policymaking. Existing studies often focus narrowly on specific conditions, rely on small, non-representative samples, and typically overlook the ramifications effects on parents, siblings, grandparents, and extended family life. This lack of population-based, comprehensive, and causal evidence has created a critical gap in understanding the full scope of how child disability shapes life trajectories, well-being, and social integration within families.
FRAILIFE addresses this gap by shifting the conventional research paradigm: instead of viewing disability solely as a characteristic of the child, it treats childhood disability as a factor that can generate vulnerability, or resilience, throughout the family system. Integrating demography, sociology, public health, psychology and disability studies, the project aims to uncover how a child’s disability influences parents’, siblings’, and grandparents’ health, socioeconomic outcomes, and social participation. The project is also expanding its scope to investigate how the disability of a child affects the cognitive and non-cognitive outcomes of classmates, depending on the different school systems and inclusive strategies. FRAILIFE innovatively uses population-based register data, representative surveys, and novel social media analytics to investigate these effects across several countries, in Europe and beyond, capturing both short- and long-term consequences and the moderating role of diverse institutional and cultural contexts.
The project is structured around four key research questions: (1) How does a child’s disability shape the life-course events and trajectories of family members? (2) What are the health consequences, both mental and physical, for these individuals? (3) How are their civic engagement and social participation influenced? (4) To what extent do institutional frameworks and cultural settings across different parts of the world amplify or mitigate these effects?
FRAILIFE’s expected impact is threefold. First, it brings into visibility one of the most vulnerable and understudied family groups, offering robust, generalizable evidence to inform social policy. Second, it contributes to social science theory by adopting a reversed stratification lens, understanding how a child’s status can shape parental and family outcomes, rather than the reverse. Third, the project supports the development of more effective, inclusive, and family-centred care systems by identifying unmet needs and variations in family outcomes across different contexts.
With its interdisciplinary approach, causal ambitions, and comparative scope, FRAILIFE aims to provide novel and crucial knowledge for scholars, practitioners, and policymakers working at the intersection of disability, inequality, and family well-being.
