Why voters don’t vote…

The EU framework research funding programmes are well known for offering money to study emerging sciences, from medicines to nanotechnology.

But for the last 12 years the programmes have also funded research into socio-economic science and humanities projects (SSH). All-in-all, €500 million has been spent under the framework programmes since SSH was first separated into its own category under FP4.

The money allocated to social sciences and humanities under each framework programme has been steadily rising, from €112m in 1994 (FP4), to €610m proposed under the latest version of FP7.

Projects paid for look at big EU social questions, including democracy, migration, education and employment.

Titles range from the self-explanatory Why don’t voters vote? to the intriguing The social problem of men.

Research is also timed to coincide with specific EU issues. Before the latest - and largest - wave of EU enlargement in 2004, a project funded under FP5 (1998-2002) looked at the exchange-rate and labour-market impacts of taking on board ten member states mostly from central and eastern Europe. At the same time, a separate project looked at different family structures in a sample of 11 old and new member states.

The amount of money allocated varies, but in the majority of cases is around €1m per project.

With SSH money more than doubled under FP7, compared to FP6, this could easily increase. Given the right number of interesting proposals, the Commission says it is also open to funding far more research this time round. Perhaps even coming up with an answer to that male social problem.

The EU framework research funding programmes are well known for offering money to study emerging sciences, from medicines to nanotechnology.