Employment Instability and Childbirth over the Last 20 Years in Italy.

Family formation is fostered by circumstances of plannability and economic and social stability. Conversely, as documented in previous literature, employment instability can hamper fertility decisions. Based on data from the Italian Labour Force Survey, this paper examines the association between employment-related instability and the likelihood of having a first or additional child from 2000 to 2020 in Italy, covering a period characterised by increasing labour market deregulation. Our results show that individual employment instability, such as temporary employment or unemployment, negatively influences the likelihood of having a first and second child, while the progression to higher parities is less affected by employment situations. Building upon previous research, we demonstrate how the negative association between fertility and employment instability has intensified over recent decades, especially for women. The large sample size also allowed for the examination of specific differences by educational levels and both partners' employment situation. In contrast to traditional views about gender roles, the employment situation of one's partner seems to matter less for women than for men.

Stratification of poverty risk: The importance of social class in four European countries.

Social class structures life chances and exposure to socioeconomic risk, but the extent to which this is still the case is subject to debate. While some assert a relevant middle-class squeeze and consequent polarisation, others argue for the disappearance of social class and a 'democratisation' of social and economic risk for all segments of postmodern society. We focused on relative poverty to interrogate the extent to which occupational class still matters and whether traditionally 'safe' middle-class occupations have lost their capacity for sheltering people from socioeconomic risk. The class-based stratification of poverty risk suggests pronounced structural inequalities between social groups, given its consequences in terms of deprived living standards and the reproduction of disadvantage. We used the longitudinal component of EU-SILC data (2004-2015) to analyse four European countries: Italy, Spain, France and the United Kingdom. We developed logistic models of poverty risk and compared class-specific average marginal effects obtained under a seemingly unrelated estimation framework. We documented persistence of class-based stratification of poverty risk with some indication of polarisation. Over time, upper-class occupations preserved their secure position, middle-class occupations showed a slight increase in poverty risk and working-classes showed the greatest increase in poverty risk. Contextual heterogeneity exists mainly in the levels while patterns are relatively similar. The particularly high-risk exposure of less advantaged classes in Southern Europe can be attributed to the prevalence of single earner households.

Mating Market and Dynamics of Union Formation.

The paper investigates the relationship between structural partner market constraints and the timing and educational sorting of unions in Germany (1985-2018). We integrate the literature on the effect of the reversed gender gap in education on educational assortative mating, with a focus on mating dynamics and the measurement of the partner market over the life course. We concentrate on two particular educational groups, low-educated men and highly educated women, those with worsening mating prospects and more subject to experience hypogamous unions. Our results show that the local education-specific mating squeeze influences union formation, its timing, and educational sorting. Indeed, for the two groups, the increasing supply of highly educated women in the partner market increases the likelihood of remaining single or establishing an hypogamous union, where she is higher educated than he. In line with search theory, we find the effects of the mating squeeze to become particularly visible after people turn 30 years of age. This is true for the risk of remaining single and forming an hypogamous union. We underline the necessity to study assortative mating and union formation from a dynamic perspective, taking into account changing structural conditions during the partner search process.

The spreading of SARS-CoV-2: Interage contacts and networks degree distribution.

Notable cross-country differences exist in the diffusion of the Covid-19 and in its lethality. Contact patterns in populations, and in particular intergenerational contacts, have been argued to be responsible for the most vulnerable, the elderly, getting infected more often and thus driving up mortality in some context, like in the southern European one. This paper asks a simple question: is it between whom contacts occur that matters or is it simply how many contacts people have? Due to the high number of confounding factors, it is extremely difficult to empirically assess the impact of single network features separately. This is why we rely on a simulation exercise in which we counterfactually manipulate single aspects of countries' age distribution and network structures. We disentangle the contributions of the kind and of the number of contacts while holding constant the age structure. More precisely, we isolate the respective effects of inter-age contact patterns, degree distribution and clustering on the virus propagation across age groups. We use survey data on face-to-face contacts for Great Britain, Italy, and Germany, to reconstruct networks that mirror empirical contact patterns in these three countries. It turns out that the number of social contacts (degree distribution) largely accounts for the higher infection rates of the elderly in the Italian context, while differences in inter-age contacts patterns are only responsible for minor differences. This suggests that policies specifically targeting inter-age contacts would be little effective.

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.

The buffering role of the family in the relationship between job loss and self-perceived health: Longitudinal results from Europe, 2004-2011.

Unemployment has numerous negative consequences for health, but the family and the welfare state can mitigate these consequences. How the family supports its members and whether and to what extent this interacts with the broader context is still an open question. Our evidence show that job loss is causally linked to significant declines in health for men, but not for women. Yet, the increased risk of poor health is lower for coupled men, especially if the partner is employed. This suggests that both emotional and economic support play a role. Moreover, the family's mitigating role widely varies across different welfare regimes in Europe and it is particularly strong in Southern and Eastern regimes, characterized by "rudimentary" welfare systems and a more traditional family model.

The Spreading of Cohabitation as a Diffusion Process: Evidence from Italy.

Drawing on seminal work by Nazio and Blossfeld (Eur J Popul 19(1):47-82, 2003) and Di Giulio and Rosina (Demogr Res 16(14):441-468, 2007), this paper tests whether the recent spread of cohabitation in Italy has followed the typical pattern of diffusion of innovation processes. In doing so, we contribute to the debate on the determinants of the emergence of "new" family behaviour. Following previous literature, innovative behaviour should spread initially through direct social modelling, i.e. interpersonal communication among highly selected individuals (peer effects). At later stages, the diffusion should spread through knowledge awareness of the innovation, i.e. communication with previous generations (pre-cohort effects), so that also less selected individuals are prone to adopt the new behaviour. In the specific Italian context-a Catholic, "familistic" setting, with high normative pressure and importance of parental approval-we surmise the influence of previous generations to be dominant. We use data from the "Family and Social Subjects" survey carried out by Istat (2009) and apply Event History Analysis in the form of competing-risks exponential models to study Italian women's transition to cohabitation as first partnership. Results suggest that the most important driver of the spreading of cohabitation in Italy is represented by the degree of its diffusion among older cohorts. However, we find a positive and significant interaction between women's education and peer effects at the onset of the phenomenon, in line with the Second Demographic Transition (SDT) hypothesis. Cohabitation is also more likely if parents experienced separation/divorce and, more generally, if the environment of the family of origin can be described as "SDT-friendly".