Dr Maria Petrillo
Faculty of Social Sciences
Research Associate
Full contact details
Faculty of Social Sciences
The Wave
2 Whitham Road
Sheffield
S10 2AH
- Profile
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Maria joined the Centre for Care in May 2022 as a Research Associate working on Inequalities in Care. She is an applied economist specialising in quantitative methods and quasi-experimental research design.
Maria is a PhD-candidate at the University of Sheffield and the Centre of Vocational Education Research (CVER), London School of Economics and Political Science. She holds a BSc and MSc in Economics from the Second University of Naples and an MSc in Economics and Public Policy from the University of York. Maria is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (AFHEA) and an ONS Accredited Researcher.
Her research lies in the areas of Economics of Education, Gender Economics and Labour Economics, with a current main focus on gaps in the labour market outcomes and wage determination. By using applied econometrics methods, she strives to understand how educational achievements and labour market characteristics may impact inequalities, with particular reference to gender and social background inequalities.
Maria has previously worked at the University of Sheffield, Department of Economics and at Hallam University teaching modules in Statistics, Microeconomics and Microeconometrics using Stata.
In her role at the Centre for Care, Maria will be working with Professor Gwilym Pryce and Professor Matthew Bennett using the latest statistical and data linkage techniques to learn how socio-economic, health and other inequalities shape the experience of care and the consequences of these for groups and individuals in different places and over time.
- Research interests
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- Labour Economics
- Economics of Education
- Gender Economics
- Applied Microeconometrics
- Quantitative and quasi-experimental methods
- Publications
Petrillo, M., Zhang, J., Pryce, G., & Bennett, M. (2026). Who Cares? Exploring the Socio-Economic Dynamics of Informal Caregiving Trajectories in England. Social Science & Medicine, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2026.119552
Petrillo, M., Rodrigues, R., Bennett, M., & Pryce, G. (2026). The Gendered Landscape of Informal Caregiving: Cohort Effects and Socioeconomic Inequalities in England. Social Science & Medicine, 119052. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2026.119052
Zhang, J., Petrillo, M., Bennett, M. R., & Pryce, G. (2026). Declining demands or constraining supply? Explaining the trend of care home entry in England 2001-2021. The Journals of Gerontology, Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences, gbag104. https://doi.org/10.1093/geronb/gbag104
Petrillo, M., Valdenegro, D., Rahal, C., Zhang, Y., Pryce, G. and Bennett, M.R., 2024. Estimating the cost of informal care with a novel two-stage approach to individual synthetic control. https://arxiv.org/abs/2411.10314
Petrillo, M., 2022. Variation in Parenthood Wage Effect: A human capital approach (No. 037). Centre for Vocational Education Research. https://cver.lse.ac.uk/textonly/cver/pubs/cverdp037.pdf
Reports
Petrillo, M. and Bennett, M., 2023. Valuing Carers 2021: England and Wales https://centreforcare.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/Valuing_Carers_WEB2.pdf
Zhang, J., Petrillo, M. and Bennett, M., 2023. Valuing Carers 2021: Northern Ireland. https://centreforcare.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/11/valuing-carers-northern-ireland_.pdf
Zhang, J., Petrillo, M. and Bennett, M., 2024. Valuing Carers 2022: Scotland. https://centreforcare.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/valuing_carers_scotland_web.pdf
Petrillo, M., Zhang, J. and Bennett, M., 2024. Valuing Carers 2021/2022: the value of unpaid care in the UK. https://centreforcare.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2024/11/valuing_carers_uk_v3_web.pdf
Petrillo, M., Bennett, M.R. and Pryce, G., 2022. Cycles of caring: transitions in and out of unpaid care.
https://centreforcare.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2022/11/CUK-Carers-Rights-Day-Research-Report-2022-Web.pdfPetrillo, M., Zhang, J., Driscoll, B. and Hughes, N., 2025. Valuing Kinship Care in England. https://centreforcare.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/02/Valuing-Kinship-Care-in-England-v2-reduced-size.pdf
Dashboard
Petrillo, M., Siddall, T., and Bennett, M. (2025). Unpaid Care Dashboard. Centre for Care. Available at: https://centreforcare.ac.uk/uuc-dashboard
Work in progress
The causal impacts of social frontiers on mental health and wellbeing: Identifying the challenges and potential solutions (with Duncan Lee, Gwilym Pryce and Miguel Ramos, working paper available on request)
Parenthood Wage Effects in Germany: Evidence from a Two-Stage Individual Synthetic Control Approach (with Daniel Valdenegro)
Estimating local intergenerational social mobility: carers versus non-cares in England and Wales (with Franz Buscha, Emma Gorman and Gwilym Pryce)
Does the education type and the educational orientation of the country impact the gender wage gap? (working paper available on request)
Is this really a man’s world? The effect of vertical and horizontal segregation in the UK (working paper available on request)