Samuel Plach

Samuel Plach is a PhD candidate in Social and Political Science at Bocconi University and a researcher at the Carlo F. Dondena Centre for Research on Social Dynamics and Public Policy. His research examines how social relationships and wider economic and institutional conditions shape individuals’ opportunities to achieve important life aspirations, including upward mobility and the realization of their fertility ideals.

A central strand of his work investigates how social networks and peer environments affect intergenerational mobility. Using large-scale administrative data, he studies how exposure to peers in neighborhoods and schools shapes children's later-life outcomes beyond parental income. Using digital-trace data, he also examines how different network structures moderate the negative effects of technological change on intergenerational mobility.

In his work on fertility, he analyzes recent fertility dynamics, particularly the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic and the broader polycrisis. He also studies individual-level drivers of low fertility, including individuals’ social networks and perceived societal uncertainty alongside more established determinants, using survey experiments among other methods. Finally, he investigates the gap between individuals’ fertility ideals and realized fertility, as well as the factors that drive this gap, developing novel survey items fielded in his own surveys and in the UNFPA YRCS.