The effect of women’s participation in the labour market on the postponement of first childbirth: a comparison of Italy and Hungary

This paper analyses the effect of increasing female participation in the labour market on the transition to first childbirth. Regional perspectives are considered to help us understand how postponement behaviour is changing over time and at different paces in each region. The analysis is based on the first wave of the Generations and Gender Survey of Italy and Hungary. We use a multilevel event history random intercept model to examine the effect of individuals’ positions in the labour market on the transition to motherhood, controlling for differences in macrolevel factors related to regional backgrounds in the two countries. The regional data for Italy came from the Italian National Stati…

Le indagini statistiche sulla transizione scuola e università/lavoro

The role of the accumulation of poverty and unemployment for health disadvantages

Health inequality is an important aspect of how advantages and disadvantages are distributed within societies. We extend previous research by considering how trajectories of poverty and employment affect self-reported health among young adults. We use data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, restricting the analytical sample to those who were 25 to 45 year-old in 2005. We calculated the indexes that account for persistence and intensity of poverty and employment on 10-year-long individual-level employment and household-level poverty trajectories. Ordinal logit regression models show that both long-lasting poverty and short periods out of employment are detrimental for men’s health. In con…

The analysis of the material deprivation of foreigners in Italy.

We examine the material deprivation of foreigners on a sub-sample of the 2009 Italian Survey on Income and Living Conditions. We employ two indices of material deprivation that take into account the regional level of our analysis, and rely on the assignment of weights to items. The determinants of material deprivation are investigated through a zero-inflated beta model.

A Universal Health Care System? Unmet Need for Medical Care Among Regular and Irregular Immigrants in Italy

Italy has a universal health care system that covers, in principle, the whole resident population, irrespective of citizenship and legal status. This study calculates the prevalence of unmet need for medical care among Italian citizens, regular and irregular immigrants and estimates logistic regression models to assess whether differences by citizenship and legal status hold true once adjusting for potential confounders. The analysis is based on two Surveys on Income and Living Conditions of Italian households and households with foreigners. Controlling for various factors, the odds of experiencing unmet need for medical care are 27% higher for regular immigrants than for Italian citizens a…

An Analysis of the Residential Segregation of Foreigners in the Municipality of Palermo

Ethnic residential segregation in Italy is emerging as a key question, which will be crucial in the definition and implementation of both urban and social policies. This chapter focuses on this phenomenon in the Italian Metropolitan Area of Palermo. We use individual data for all the population residing in the city on 31 December 2011, organised by ethnicity and neighbourhood to describe the spatial distribution and the residential segregation of foreigners in the city, applying many different segregation measures. Results show that the top ten nationalities in Palermo are not uniformly spread across the different parts of the city but tend to cluster in specific areas. The most segregated …

La persistenza di povertà tra i giovani europei. Fattori di rischio, persistenza, correttivi

Lo studio analizza i fattori associati alla persistenza di povertà fra i giovani in undici paesi europei. Oltre alle condizioni che spiegano normalmente la povertà e la sua persistenza (avere un basso livello di istruzione, vivere senza un partner, uscire dalla famiglia d’origine ed essere senza lavoro), emerge l’importanza del sistema di welfare nello smussare i principali fattori di rischio cui i giovani sono esposti nel processo di transizione allo stato adulto. Si evidenzia come per i giovani europei l’uscita dalla famiglia d’origine sia uno dei principali fattori di rischio, mentre la maggiore probabilità di sperimentare la povertà persistente da parte delle donne sia dovuta principalm…

Foreigners in Italy: economic living conditions and unmet medical needs

Foreigners in Italy experience specific inequalities in health and in access to health care that overlap with existing geographical disparities. In this study we aim to compare the effects of living conditions on self-perceived unmet medical needs among foreigners living in Italy. In particular, we test several measures of living conditions, and assess whether these measures affect foreigners differently depending on their nationality. The data used for the analysis are from the Italian Special Survey of Income and Living Conditions carried out on households with foreigners in 2009.

A fuzzy approach to multidimensional material deprivation measurement: the case of foreigners living in Italy

This paper provides a new approach to the measurement of multidimensional material deprivation, based on partial order theory and on fuzzy set measurement. The main feature of the methodology is that the information needed for the deprivation assessment is extracted directly from the relational structure of the dataset, avoiding any kind of scaling and not proper aggregation procedure, so as to respect the measurement level of the data. An empirical illustration, using data from a special EU-SILC survey on migrants in Italy, provides a new insight on the material deprivation of foreigners living in Italy

Persistent Employment Instability and Fertility Intentions: The Gender-Specific Effect within Couples in Italy

Our paper adds to the growing literature on the measurement of employment instability and on that on its consequences on fertility dynamics. We argue that many of these studies disregard a crucial dimension of employment instability: its persistence (duration). It is the persistence in an unstable condition, more than the status itself, that may have the most severe consequences on subsequent family choices. In this paper, we propose an index of persistence in employment instability that synthesizes all the information inside the individual sequence of employment statuses in a single number accounting simultaneously for the duration, sequencing, intensity, and labour market circumstances. T…

Rimesse

Time pattern of remittance behaviours in Italy

This paper intends to figure out why immigrants remit, what characteristicsthey have and, in particular, which of these individual characteristics influence (and inwhat sense) their propensity to remit. In particular, it intends to verify the existence of a"time effect" during the migration process. The time effect suppose that the propensityand the intensity of remittances becomes less consistent as far as the immigrantintegrates into the host country and the ties with the country of origin become lessintense. In practice, according to this hypothesis, the evolution of the migration plantowards stabilization in the new country, rather than to return home, would lead themigrant to invest mo…

Unmet need for health care: the case of foreigners living in Italy

Italy has a public and universal health care system that covers -in principle- both regular and irregular migrants’ health care demand. However, the concrete shows that migrants in Italy experience specific inequalities in health and access to health care, that overlap the existing geographical disparities in the access to care across the country. This study aims to compare self-perceived unmet need among foreigners living in Italy assessing whether it varies from one foreign-national group to the other. In particular, we study the self-reported unmet need as an indicator of access to health care, exploring its reasons. Data used for the analysis come from the Italian special Survey of Inco…

MEASURING LONGITUDINAL POVERTY

Traditional measures of poverty persistence, such as “poverty rate” or the “persistent-risk-of-poverty rate”, do not devote enough attention to the sequence of poverty spells. In particular, they do not put enough attention in underlining the different effects associated with occasional single spells of poverty and the consecutive years of poverty. In this paper we propose a new index which measures the severity of poverty in a longitudinal view, taking into account the way poverty and non-poverty spells follow one another along individual life courses. The index is normalized and increases with the number of consecutive years in poverty along the individual poverty profile. The index is su…

Rimesse e famiglia di origine: uno studio del comportamento degli immigrati in Italia

Studying poverty over time: an analysis by gender and age in Europe

This paper aims to communicate a new conceptualization of persistent poverty used to build the class of longitudinal poverty indices by Mendola et al.(2011), and to show how these indices could be helpful in analyzing the characteristics of persistence of poverty among generations. The indices are based upon the idea that the longer the sequence of consecutive high poverty gaps is, the worse the situation experienced. Moreover they introduce, via a parameter, the idea that the evaluation of the individual experiences of poverty must take into account the poverty mobility in the society. An empirical application on European Community Household Panel data compare the contributions of each gen…

Strutture e flussi di popolazione nel bacino del Mediterraneo e nell'Unione europea

Il rinvio della fecondità in Italia e Ungheria: analogie e differenze

LOW FERTILITY AND POLICY RESPONSES IN SOME DEVELOPED COUNTRIES WITH SPECIAL REFERENCE TO EUROPE

What keeps young adults in permanent poverty? A comparative analysis using ECHP

Abstract Previous studies suggest that there are strong differences in the rates of youth poverty across European countries. Rather surprisingly, it is found to be high in Scandinavian countries, and relatively speaking, lower in Mediterranean and Anglo-Saxon countries. This somewhat unexpected finding prompts the question whether the incidence of poverty is an appropriate measure of youth disadvantage. Instead of considering poverty rates we consider the length of recorded poverty spells, taking into account explicitly the temporal sequencing of the episodes of poverty. Using the European Community Household Panel, individuals are classified into different groups of poverty permanence, eac…

Gli stranieri a Palermo: caratteristiche socio-demografiche

How Much Should we Care about Consecutive Spells of Poverty? Proposal of a New Index

Is cross-sectional poverty a reflection of real economic and social disadvantage? Does total number of years spent in poverty provide sufficient information about poverty severity? Recent studies show that in some countries there are good reasons to believe that it is not (see, among others, Mendola et al., 2009). Traditional measures of poverty persistence, such as ‘poverty rate’ (i.e. the number of years spent in poverty upon total number of observations) or the ‘persistent-risk-ofpoverty rate’, do not devote enough attention to the sequence of poverty spells. In particular they are not good enough in underlining different effects associated to occasional single spells of poverty and cons…

The effect of women’s participation in labour market on postponement of childbearing: a comparison between Italy and Hungary

This paper analyses the effect of the increasing female participation in the labour market onthe transition to first childbirth. In this analysis both the ge nerational and the regional perspective are taken into account to understand, how postponement behaviour is spreading from one region to the other and from one generation to the next. The analysis is based on the first wave of the Generations and Gender Survey of Italy and Hungary. It adopts a multilevel event history model to focus on the micro-level relationship between the transition to adulthood and reproductive behaviour, to understand the empirical importance of macro-level factors related to regional socio-economic and cultural …

Mobilità sociale, e comportamenti riproduttivi: tra effetto socializzazione e acculturazione

Palermo e i suoi quartieri: il profilo demografico della città

The Material Deprivation of Foreigners: Measurement and Determinants

We examine the material deprivation of foreigners on a sub-sample of the 2009 Italian Survey on Income and Living Conditions carried out by Istat. We employ an index of material deprivation that takes into account the regional level of analysis, and relies on the assignment of weights to deprivation items. The effects produced on material deprivation by several variables, interpreted as determinants, are investigated through a zero-inflated beta regression model.

GENDER DIFFERENCES ON POVERTY PERSISTENCE AMONG YOUTH: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS USING ECHP

Stratificazione sociale, mobilità sociale e fecondità in Italia

Understanding youth chronic poverty in South of Europe

This paper investigates chronic poverty among the youth in Southern Europe, which is characterized by very high levels of persistent poverty, and welfare systems which are unable to smooth disparities. The main aim is to investigate on how longitudinal poverty differs in socio-demographic and economic characteristics among the Mediterranean youth. The intensity of poverty over time is measured by a new longitudinal poverty index based on the rationale of cumulative hardship. We tested the effects of many covariates on the incidence and intensity of chronic poverty, controlling for main socio-demographic and economic characteristics, using a ZINB model. The peculiar mix between the lack of e…

Giovani e abitudini di vita: i risultati di un'indagine su studenti delle scuole superiori

Socio-Demographic Vulnerability: The Condition of Italian Young People

For a kind of inertia effect, today the Italian welfare state protects the older too much and, on the contrary, it does not counter sufficiently the new risks associated with other phases of life. Not much seems to be implemented in favour of Italian young people who, as a matter of fact, seem to suffer a lot from the present changes: young people remain longer in the parental home and postpone setting up their own independent life to a most advanced age. In order to understand the situation of vulnerability increasingly widespread among young people, it seemed more and more necessary an in-depth analysis of the reasons and the subjective status of the discomfort that affects young people b…

DEMOGRAFIA, MIGRAZIONI E POLITICHE MIGRATORIE NEL BACINO DEL MEDITERRANEO

Salute dei rifugiati. Risultati di un'indagine

Population aging and labour market: two Italian surveys

Persistent Employment Instability and Fertility Intentions in Italy

Our paper adds to the growing literature on the measurement of employment instability and on that on its consequences on fertility dynamics. We argue that many of these studies disregard a crucial dimension of employment instability: its persistence (duration). It is the persistence in an unstable condition, more than the status itself, that may have the most severe consequences on subsequent family choices. In this paper, we propose an index of persistence in employment instability that synthesizes all the information inside the individual sequence of employment statuses in a single number accounting simultaneously for the duration, sequencing, intensity, and labour market circumstances. T…

Combining the intensity and sequencing of the poverty experience:a class of longitudinal poverty indices

Summary Traditional measures of the persistence of poverty do not devote enough attention to the sequence of spells of poverty. We propose a new class of indices which measures the severity of chronic poverty, taking into account the way in which spells of poverty and non-poverty follow one another along individual life courses. All the years spent in poverty concur with the measurement of the persistency of poverty, albeit with a decreasing contribution provided that the distance between two consecutive spells of poverty becomes longer. Moreover, the distance from the poverty line and the poverty persistence probabilities are explicitly taken into account. A macrolevel index, which allows …

Youth poverty in Europe.

This research examines poverty among young people aged 16 to 29, across 13 countries of the pre-enlargement European Union. Although young adulthood is known to be a time of uncertainty and vulnerability, there has been little research into the incidence of poverty among young people. This report aims to fill this knowledge gap. More life-changing transitions occur during the young adult years than at any other time in people’s lives. This research looks at how these affect young people’s risks of poverty, including events such as: - leaving the parental home - setting up home with a partner - finishing education - finding (or not finding) a job, and - starting a family. The research compar…

Le statistiche sull’università

Ethnic segregation in a metropolitan area of Italy: the case of Palermo

La segregazione residenziale etnica in Italia è una questione emergente, che sarà fondamentale nella definizione e attuazione di politiche urbanistiche e sociali. Questo articolo si focalizza sull’analisi del fenomeno nel comune di Palermo. Utilizziamo i dati della popolazione residente in città nel 2011 in tutti i quartieri suddivisa per etnia. Facciamo dapprima ricorso a tecniche di analisi spaziale tradizionale al fine di descrivere la segregazione residenziale degli stranieri e, tra le altre misure, calcoliamo l'indice di dissimilarità di Duncan e Duncan. Successivamente, applichiamo un approccio metodologico recentemente proposto in letteratura che consente di correggere la distorsione…

The importance of consecutive spells of poverty: a longitudinal poverty index

Traditional measures of poverty persistence, such as ’poverty rate’ (i.e., the number of years spent in poverty upon the total number of observations) or the ’persistent-risk-of-poverty rate’, do not devote enough attention to the sequence of poverty spells. In particular, they are insufficient in underlining the different effects associated with occasional single spells of poverty and the consecutive years of poverty. Here, we propose a new index which measures the severity of poverty, taking into account the way poverty and non-poverty spells follow one another along individual life courses. The index is normalized and increases with the number of consecutive years in poverty along the se…

Remittance behaviours of foreigners in Italy

This article investigates the determinants of remittance behaviours among foreigners in Italy and intends to gain a better understanding of the temporal pattern of remittances. The analysis is based on data from the 2009 “Italian Statistics on Income and Living Conditions of Households with Foreigners”. The decisions on whether to remit and how much to remit are separately yet simultaneously estimated using a zero-inflated beta regression model. The findings reveal that remittances are driven by a mix of altruistic and self-interest motives that may persist for many years. Many covariates included in the model have a different effect on the propensity to remit and on the relative amount of …

Measuring Vulnerability of Asylum Seekers and Refugees in Italy

In recent years, a growing number of forced migrants have travelled to Italy across the Mediterranean Sea. While the number of new arrivals has diminished since 2017, the Italian reception system still struggles to process the high number of applications for international protection. A significant proportion of forced migrants who arrive in Italy end up living in informal settlements, such as occupied buildings, shacks, containers and tented camps. In this study, we assess the vulnerability of asylum seekers and refugees living in informal settlements in Italy, using data from the first nationally representative survey of this population. We compare a count measure of vulnerability with a n…

Ai margini dell'accoglienza. Rifugiati esclusi dal sistema di accoglienza ufficiale

Una indagine tra le imprese

The effect of foreigners’ economic living conditions on self-perceived unmet medical needs

Gli stranieri in Italia sperimentano disuguaglianze specifiche in materia di salute e di accesso alle cure sanitarie, che si sovrappongono alle disparità geografiche esistenti. Questo studio si propone di verificare l'effetto delle condizioni di vita sul bisogno insoddisfatto di cure sanitarie degli stranieri che vivono in Italia. In particolare esso valuta diverse misure delle condizioni di vita e ha l’obiettivo di verificare come esse influenzino diversamente i vari gruppi di stranieri. I dati utilizzati per l'analisi sono quelli della indagine speciale italiana su reddito e condizioni di vita realizzata su famiglie con stranieri nel 2009 Foreigners in Italy experience specific inequaliti…

La propensione alle rimesse degli stranieri in Italia

Persistent Employment Instability and Fertility Intentions

Our paper adds to the growing literature on the measurement of employment instability and its consequences on fertility dynamics. Many of these studies disregard that the persistence (duration) in an unstable condition, more than the status itself, may have the most severe consequences on subsequent family choices. In this paper, we propose an index of persistence in employment instability (EINI) that synthesizes all the information inside the individual sequence of employment statuses in a single number accounting simultaneously for the duration, sequencing, intensity, and labour market circumstances. Then, we test its impact on short-term childbearing intentions of Italian couples separat…

Malessere demografico e socio-economico. Un’analisi sui comuni italiani al 2001

Poverty Permanence Among European Youth

Previous studies suggest that Scandinavian countries are the ones with the highest rates of youth poverty in Europe. This somewhat unexpected finding prompts the question whether the incidence of poverty is an appropriate measure of youth disadvantage. Instead of considering poverty rates we define here youth disadvantage in terms of the number of periods an individual is recorded to be below the poverty line. Using the European Community Household Panel, individuals are classified into different groups of poverty permanence, each reflecting severity of social disadvantage. Based on these categories we implement a generalized ordinal logit model to assess the various factors associated with…

Socio-Demographic Vulnerability of Youth

For a kind of inertia effect, the Italian welfare state protects today the old age too intensely while little the new risks associated with other phases of life course. Young Italians seem to suffer the actual changes: “youth remain longer in parental home and postpone the creation of its own independent life to most advanced age”. To understand the vulnerability situation increasingly widespreading among young people, it seems more and more necessary the depth analysis of the reasons and the subjective status of this discomfort that occur through a delay in transition to adulthood. In particular we study the self-perceived vulnerability situation of young Italians in the labor market (both…

Neighbourhood effects and determinants of population changes in Italy: a spatial perspective

Population trends in Italy are strongly spatially differentiated, with some munic- ipalities showing a systematic loss of population, and others showing an equally continuous demographic increase. Here, we focus our attention on the spatial dimension of population change, looking at how different socio-economic and demographic dimensions affect population changes, as well as their spatial effects. After performing a preliminary descriptive analysis of the trends of population growth and decline in Italy over the last 40 years and the relevant demographic components, we used a spatial Durbin model (SDM) to investigate the potential existence of a diffusion process and the determinants of the…

Remittance behaviours of foreigners in Italy

This paper intends to figure out why immigrants remit, what characteristics they have and, in particular, which of these individual characteristics influence (and in what sense) their remittance behaviours. In particular, it aims to verify the existence of a "time effect" during the migration process. The time effect supposes that the propensity and amount of remittances become less consistent as far as the immigrant integrates into the host country and the ties with the country of origin become less intense. In practice, according to this hypothesis, the evolution of the migration plan towards stabilisation in the new country, rather than to return home, would lead the migrant to invest mo…

Valorizzazione dei beni culturali e sviluppo economico

Does persistent employment instability affect fertility? A couple perspective

Family networks and refugees’ health conditions. A picture from Italian informal settlements

While the relationships between social networks and health are widely acknowledged in the literature, few of these studies have covered the population of refugees living in makeshift camps. In our analysis of a nationally representative Italian survey of individuals living in informal settlements, we find that many had weak family relations: only 10 per cent had one or more family members in their settlement. The paper analyses the effects of individual social network on two measures of health, and finds that the refugees’ health conditions were associated with both their personal characteristics and the characteristics of the settlement. The results show that more than 50 per cent of these…

Chronic Poverty in European Mediterranean Countries

This chapter investigates the characteristics of chronic poverty among youth in Southern European countries. These countries have the highest levels of poverty in Europe and welfare systems unable to smooth social inequalities effectively. The main aim of this chapter is to investigate on how long-lasting poor among the Mediterranean youth differs in socio-demographic and economic characteristics. The intensity of poverty over time is measured by a very recent longitudinal poverty index based on the rationale of cumulative hardship. We tested the effects of many covariates on the incidence and intensity of chronic poverty, controlling for main socio-demographic and economic characteristics,…

Poverty Persistence Among Youth: A Comparative Analysis

Material deprivation of foreigners in Italy

According to the official Eurostat measure, material deprivation is particularly high among foreigners. But do each deprivation item have the same importance? Are there differences in material deprivation across regions? Is there homogeneity of items’ incidence across regions? In this paper we propose a weighted index of material deprivation (Individual Material Deprivation Index-IMDI) that takes into account the different importance assigned to each of the 9 Eurostat items’ of deprivation in the different geographical areas. We use our weighed index to compare levels of material deprivation of foreign (both in terms of distribution and intensity), to study the differences among nationaliti…

Un'implosione demografica per la Liguria? Tendenze della popolazione, mercato del lavoro, immigrazione e malessere demografico

Erratum to: Socio-Demographic Vulnerability: The Condition of Italian Young People

Persistent joblessness and fertility intentions

Background: The vast majority of demographic studies have approached and operationalised the notion of economic uncertainty using snapshot indicators. Hence, the complexity and diversity of individuals' employment careers were largely hidden. We posit that the persistence of joblessness - that is, repeated and close spells of joblessness - represents a crucial marker of economic uncertainty in the realm of fertility (intention) research. Objective: We aim to explore the association between persistent joblessness of both members of the couple and women's fertility intentions among those who entered employment at least once in the last five years. Methods: We develop an index of persistent jo…

Demographic aspects of aging

Abstract Population aging is occurring in almost all developed countries, albeit with differences in timing and intensity. This unprecedented phenomenon is evident not only in the change in the population age structure, but also in the impressive increase in the average length of life. After describing past, current, and future population trends, this contribution presents theories explaining the reasons for this long-term process that is completely reshaping the age structure of the population. It also describes the inequalities in aging (focusing in particular on the differences by gender, education, and cause of death) and introduces some measures of the individual health and economic co…

Transizione allo stato adulto, famiglia e fecondità

Il quadro demografico attuale e le prospettive future

Le previsioni demografiche: il caso italiano nel contesto europeo e mondiale

Health and Living Conditions of Refugees and Asylum-seekers: A Survey of Informal Settlements in Italy

Newspapers and humanitarian organisations have long shown that many asylumseekers and other beneficiaries of international protection are forced to live for months or even years in precarious settlements that have sprung up spontaneously throughout Italy. However, there are no official statistics on how many asylum-seekers and refugees in Italy live this way. Our survey, carried out in 2015, is the first national survey of foreign nationals living in these makeshift camps. It aims to build a complete list of informal settlements in Italy and provide an estimate of the population size, characteristics, and living conditions of these settlements, with a focus on health conditions. The conditi…

MATERIAL DEPRIVATION AMONG FOREIGNERS IN ITALY

In all European countries, migrant populations tend to have worse living conditions than native; this is particularly true for those born outside the EU. This paper proposes a new way to look at the relative living conditions of foreigners by looking at non-monetary (or ‘direct’) indicators of material deprivation in Italy-a country characterized by the presence of a wide range of nationalities. To examine differences in economic integration of foreigners, the paper documents deprivation differentials across groups of foreigners. In particular, we measure differences in material deprivation between groups of foreigners once we control for the demographic and socioeconomic characteristics of…

The contribution to poverty persistence of children, adults, and the elderly: some empirical evidences from eleven European countries

This paper aims to communicate a new conceptualization of persistent poverty used to build the class of longitudinal poverty indices by Mendola et al. (2011), and to show how these indices could be helpful in analyzing the characteristics of persistence of poverty in different age groups. The indices are based upon the idea that the longer the sequence of consecutive high poverty gaps is, the worse the situation experienced. An empirical application on European Community Household Panel data compares the contributions of age groups to the overall index in some European countries and allows to identify the strata of population more exposed to poverty persistence.

The importance of consecutive spells of poverty: a path-dependent index of longitudinal poverty

In this paper we propose a new index of individual poverty in the longitudinal perspective, taking into account the way poverty and non-poverty spells follow one another along individual life courses. The Poverty Persistence Index (PPI) is based on all the pairwise distances between the waves of poverty. The PPI is normalized and it assigns a higher degree of (longitudinal) poverty to people who experience poverty in consecutive, rather than separated, periods, for whom the distances from the poverty line are larger along time and moreover, when the worst years are consecutive and/or recent. We also propose an aggregate index of persistence in poverty (APPI) in order to measure the distribu…