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The 25-year-old economist with a "doctor's heart”

EoF: Stories - Andrea Stringhetti is a young PhD student who studies the effect of crisis on the increase in inequalities and poverty.

by Maria Gaglione

published in Avvenire on 16/11/2019

There are many young Italian academics who wish to participate in The Economy of Francesco. Students, PhD scholars, young professors. Citizens of the world, they are involved in political economy, econometrics, finance, management, sustainable development and the fight against poverty. Andrea Stringhetti is one of them. One of the youngest. A twenty-five years old Economics graduate, he is at the beginning of his doctorate studies in Political and Public Economics at the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris. We reach him on the phone, while he's in the university campus library. In his sparkling voice he tells us about the great problems that guided his choices.

When at the end of high school I had to choose a university faculty, I was very undecided whether to study medicine or economics. For a while I hoped that the admission test would eventually decide it for me, but soon I found out that I passed both tests! After another period of indecision I realized that my deepest desire was to study economics while maintaining a 'doctor's heart', that is, being attentive to people, and especially to the ones that are considered as the last. This is the reason why I started to study economics and for many years I looked for those in the academic field who had this vision of the world, meeting men and women who helped me to understand how economics, too, can be put at the service of people through study and research". Studying, therefore, was seen by him as a vocation to serve others and especially the most fragile, those whom no one notices, the men and women who remain outside the system, or suffer its consequences. This was also the drive that moved Andrea to undertake studies in economics: "I wanted to understand and deepen my knowledge about the causes and consequences of the crisis of the economic system (we are in 2013, at the beginning of his university career, - the ed.), the paradoxical growth of inequalities. Watching the news on TV wasn't enough for me, I felt I had to study in order to directly understand the structural problems of the world economy".

Already in his master thesis, Andrea focused on studying inequalities, offering a deeper reading on the effect of information on the perception of the truth, testing a way to counteract the fake news that his study confirmed to affect those segments of the population that, for various reasons, have less access to in-depth and plural information.

“When I read the Pope's invitation, I decided that I would apply to participate, because today Pope Francis is the world authority that most of all continually draws attention to man and especially to the ones considered as the last. From that moment I began to inform myself and with some colleagues and university professors we began a process of preparation".

We’ll let Andrea go back to his studies now. His research project is still at the beginning. He will tell us about it in Assisi, with his heart of a doctor and a future that will surely be worth to write about.

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