Working Papers del DiSIA
Covid-19 as an Engine of Family Reshuffling. Gender Equality and Relationship Quality during the Pandemic
Daniele Vignoli, Raffaele Guetto, Daniela Bellani
The consequences of the Covid-19 pandemic are not limited solely to health and economics; couples’ relationships are also affected. There is, though, insufficient evidence as to how families are adapting to the new normal and the pandemic’s long-term effects on relationship quality. We use novel population-level data collected in September 2021 in Italy as part of the Familydemic Survey to examine variation and correlates of relationship quality in the advanced stages of the pandemic. Our findings suggest that the pandemic is responsible for huge variations in family life. When children are involved, approximately 45–50% of couples experienced changes in their relationship satisfaction. Couples have attempted to adapt to the new reality, experiencing both gains and losses in relationship quality. For couples with less egalitarian gender attitudes, and for couples in which the pandemic has fostered preexisting domestic gender inequalities, relationship quality declined. For more egalitarian couples, and for couples in which the pandemic has offered the opportunity for a new equilibrium with a more balanced division of unpaid work, relationship quality improved.
Working Papers del Dipartimento
Close kin influence COVID-19 precautionary behaviors and vaccine acceptance of older individuals
Bruno Arpino, Valeria Bordone, Giorgio Di Gessa
The family plays a central role in shaping health behaviors of its members through social control and support mechanisms. We investigate whether and to what extent close kin (i.e., partner and children) have mattered for older people in taking on precautionary behaviors (e.g., physical distancing) and vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic in Europe. Drawing on data from the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), we combine its Corona Surveys (June-August 2020 and June-August 2021) with pre-COVID information (October 2019-March2020). We find that having close kin (especially a partner) is associated with a higher probability of both adopting precautionary behaviors and accepting a COVID-19 vaccine. Results are robust to controlling for other potential drivers of precautionary behaviors and vaccine acceptance, as well as to accounting for co-residence with kin. Our findings suggest that policy makers and practitioners may differently address kinless individuals when promoting public policy measures.
Working Papers del Dipartimento
Unstable Employment Careers and Completed Fertility before and after Labour Market Deregulation in Italy
Giammarco Alderotti, Raffaele Guetto, Paolo Barbieri, Stefani Scherer, Daniele Vignoli
Labour market instability comes with consequences for fertility decisions. Especially in the southern European context insecure employment situations hamper the transition to parenthood. Most research so far has focused on first childbirth, ignoring potential ‘catching up’ effects and thus the more encompassing view on cohort fertility. This paper extends on this point analysing the consequences of employment insecurities on completed fertility for men and women in Italy. In a cohort perspective, we look at fertility outcomes at age 41 or more among those who experienced labour market deregulation (cohorts born 1966-1975) in comparison with the previous cohort (born 1951-1965), and relate the fertility outcome to the instability of their employment histories. Based on data from a large-scale, nationally representative retrospective survey administrated by the National Statistical Office, we find that fragmented employment careers and atypical employment periods come with lower likelihood to ever become a parent and lower number of children than continuous, stable careers. This paper suggests – for the first time – that the consequences of rising labour market instability for fertility is not only a timing but also a quantum issue, at least for Italy. This is true especially for men and for the younger cohorts.
Working Papers del Dipartimento
The impact of labour market deregulation reforms on fertility in Europe
Elena Bastianelli, Raffaele Guetto, Daniele Vignoli
It is theoretically ambiguous whether a more loosely regulated labour market should inhibit or foster fertility in a society. Micro-level studies on the effects of employment instability on family formation have primarily focused on single episodes of unemployment or temporary employment, by means of event history analyses modelling the instantaneous effects of labour market transitions. This approach has highlighted the existence of a negative association between employment instability and fertility but makes it difficult to evaluate the overall fertility consequences of the several waves of labour market deregulation reforms implemented in Europe. Furthermore, the few existing studies analysing the relationship between employment protection legislation (EPL) and fertility have found mixed evidence. This paper reconciles the ambivalent conclusions of previous studies by analysing the impact of labour market (de)regulation reforms on total fertility across 19 European countries between 1990 and 2019. We operationalize the country-specific regulatory strictness of regular and temporary contracts over time through the OECD EPL indexes. Our results indicate that an increase in employment protection for regular workers positively affects total fertility. However, an increasing gap between the regulation of regular and temporary employment – that is, labour market segmentation – negatively impacts total fertility. These effects are relatively homogeneous across age groups and geographical areas and are especially pronounced among the lower-educated. We conclude that labour market segmentation, rather than a rigid EPL per se, depresses fertility.
Working Papers del Dipartimento
Drivers of change in population age structures: a time series analysis
Gustavo De Santis, Giambattista Salinari
While “classical” demography imputes population ageing to low fertility, a recent “revisionist” line of thinking signals the emergence of ageing “from the top” (i.e., due to low mortality), starting slightly after World War II. We join this debate proving that, in the long run, mortality affects the population age structure, and therefore also ageing, more than customarily believed. With data taken from the Human Mortality Database on eight populations located in Europe, North America and Oceania, and for as far back as possible (up to 1820 in some cases), and applying cointegration analysis, we show that most of the historical change observed in the proportions of young, adult and old people in these countries can be derived solely from changes in survival, ignoring fertility and migration.
Working Papers del Dipartimento
Sleeping with the enemy. Partners’ political attitudes and risk of separation
Bruno Arpino, Alessandro Di Nallo
Does politics conflict with love? We aim at answering this question by examining the effect on union dissolution of partners’ (mis)match on political preferences, defined as self-reported closeness, intention to vote, or vote for a specific party. Previous studies argued that partners’ heterogamy may increase risk of union dissolution because of differences among partners in lifestyles, attitudes, and beliefs, and/or because of disapproval from family and community members. We posit that similar arguments can apply to political heterogamy and test the effect of this new heterogamy dimension using UK data from the British Household Panel Study (BHPS) and the UK Household Longitudinal Study (UKHLS). The data offer a unique opportunity to disentangle the role of heterogamy by political preferences from the effects of heterogamies in other domains (e.g., ethnicity and religiosity) and from that of other partners’ characteristics, while also covering a long period of time (from 1991 to 2021). The data also allow to implement a more specific analysis about the referendum on UK’s permanence in the European Union (known as the Brexit referendum). We find a positive effect of political preferences heterogamy on union dissolution. In addition, diverging opinions on the Brexit referendum is associated to higher chances of partnership break-up.
Working Papers del Dipartimento
Employment uncertainty and non-coresidential partnership in very-low fertility countries: Italy and Japan
Ryohei Mogi, Ryota Mugiyama, Giammarco Alderotti
Having a partner is the initial step of any further family formation. Several studies have reported that growing labour market uncertainty has negative effects on both union formation and fertility; however, less is known about the previous step, that is, having a partner. Our study fills this gap in the literature by exploring the relationship between employment uncertainty and non-coresidential partnership status in two very-low fertility countries: Italy and Japan. We use two nationally representative surveys and examine the association between employment status and partnership status among 23–43-year-olds who have not had children and do not live with a partner (either cohabiting or married) based on logistic regression models. Our results show that employment status matters for having a non-coresidential partner only for Japanese women, particularly those unemployed/inactive, those who do not know their contract type and those with a fixed-term contract. We interpret our findings as indicating that in Italy, employment status does not matter for starting a relationship for both men and women because employment uncertainty prevails among young Italians. Regarding Japanese women, unemployed/inactive and fixed-term contractors may have difficulty finding a partner with their desired earning capacity. This study is one of few studies focusing on non-coresidential partnership as the initial step of further family formation. It demonstrates that the decision to have a partner is different from the decision to form a union, at least in terms of the association with employment status.
Working Papers del Dipartimento
First union formation in Italy: The role of micro- and macro-level economic conditions
Silvia Meggiolaro, Fausta Ongaro, Elena Pirani
In this paper, we use data from the ‘Families and Social Subjects’ survey conducted by the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) in 2016 to study the impact of micro- and macro-level economic conditions on first co-residential union formation. We aim to determine if and to what extent the probability of forming the first union is entirely explained by individual labour market positions (e.g. being unemployed or having non-standard employment), or whether adverse macro-economic conditions – which arguably increase the personal perception of uncertainty – also play a role. We differentiate by union type – marriage and cohabitation – known to be characterised by different levels of union commitment, as well as address potential gender differences by conducting separate analyses on men and women. Our results suggest that while both micro- and macro-level economic factors matter in the union formation process, their effect varies by gender and union type. Individual economic vulnerability has a greater impact on marriage than on cohabitation. Meanwhile, contextual economic uncertainty plays a relevant role in the transition to cohabitation (for both men and women) and, to a lesser extent, in the transition to marriage (for women).
Working Papers del Dipartimento
Ultimo aggiornamento 16 gennaio 2023.