Brick-by-brick inequality. Homeownership in Italy, employment instability and wealth transmission.

This paper investigates changes between, and inequalities within, birth-cohorts in Italy, surrounding homeownership. Italy is a homeownership and familialistic society, where in recent decades an increasing 'generational divide' in employment prospects has opened up, as a side-effect of a partial and targeted labour market deregulation. Drawing on the interplay of macro-level constraints with micro-level factors, we discuss patterns of inequality in attaining homeownership between cohorts, arising from greater instability of employment for young adults, and within cohorts, stemming from class-based patterns of intergenerational wealth transmission. Our analytical strategy combines a sequential cohort design with two levels of analysis that simultaneously consider young people around the normative age of housing independence and wealth transmission from their families triggered by their leaving the nest. Longitudinal analyses apply random-effects probit models and linear probability distributed fixed-effects to panel data from the Bank of Italy (SHIW 1989-2016). Results show a decrease in homeownership attainment across cohorts, which can be partially ascribed to employment disadvantages faced by younger cohorts. On top of this, class-specific patterns of intergenerational transmission are in place: lower classes rely on timely housing wealth transfers, whereas upper classes are prepared to provide their children with an extended stream of financial transfers.

Health and Volunteering in Europe: A Longitudinal Study.

This article examines the relationship between health and volunteering in advanced age in a cross-national comparison. We used longitudinal data from five waves of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe covering 13 European countries from 2004 to 2015 and employed dynamic random-effects probit models to study the consequences of declining health on voluntary work. Our results confirm that worsening health conditions (i.e., mobility limitations and depression) reduce the likelihood of volunteering, whereas chronic diseases do not. Most interestingly, we found important differences across countries: Worsening health reduces voluntary work participation, especially in contexts characterized by high rates of volunteering. Our findings have implications for policy makers and voluntary organizations that aim to encourage participation: Individual characteristics and contextual aspects must be taken into account, and people with health problems might need specific support through policies, recruitment, and retention even in contexts of overall high levels of volunteering.