Team

Kim van Berkel

Kim van Berkel works as a researcher in the Health and Social Policy cluster at SEO Amsterdam Economics. Her work spans a broad range of topics related to social security, the wider social domain, and their interaction with the labor market. In recent years, she has focused on issues such as simplifying income support systems, assessing the broader societal costs and benefits of income and participation policies, and evaluating the effectiveness of work incentives within social assistance programs.

Kim holds Master’s degrees in Econometrics (2022, cum laude) and Policy Economics (2023, summa cum laude) from Erasmus University Rotterdam. She obtained her Bachelor’s degree at Amsterdam University College (2019, summa cum laude). Kim’s Master’s thesis in Policy Economics, on the labor market effects of increased earning exemptions for social assistance recipients, won several awards. She was honored with the Jan Brouwer Thesis Award for the best Economics thesis of 2023 and the 2024 Thesis Award from the Netherlands Court of Audit. Additionally, she was one of the three nominees for the 2024 SER Thesis Award. Next to her work at SEO, Kim is also affiliated with Tilburg University as a PhD candidate.

In the past, Kim worked as a researcher at the Applied University of Amsterdam. She was part of the research team of the Amsterdam Experiment with Welfare, a study into different types of guidance for welfare recipients in Amsterdam. During her Econometrics studies, she also interned at the Netherlands Bureau for Economic Policy Analysis, where she studied the causal labour market effects of the Tozo support for self-employed individuals during the COVID-19 crisis.

Contact:

k.vanberkel@seo.nl