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Persistent joblessness and fertility intentions
Get PDFAbstract
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. In this paper, we
posit that persistence of joblessness – that is, repeated and close spells of joblessness –
represents a crucial marker of economic fragility in the realm of fertility (intention)
research.
OBJECTIVE
We aim to explore the association between persistent joblessness of both the members
of the couple among those who entered employment at least once in the last five years
and women’s fertility intentions.
METHODS
We develop an index of persistent joblessness that simultaneously considers individual
and contextual labour market conditions. Particularly it accounts for the severity of the
experience of joblessness, the chances that an individual will escape joblessness, the
alleviating effects of the years spent in continuous employment, and the recentness of
any joblessness experience. This index is operationalized for Italy by consulting the
2009 Family and Social Subjects Survey. We verify the association between the index
and women’s fertility intentions among Italian couples, net of a series of confounders.
RESULTS
Our findings show that the higher the level of persistent joblessness, the lower a
woman’s fertility intentions. Within couples, we found a gendered association between
joblessness and fertility intentions: His joblessness, more than hers, seems to play the
decisive role in inhibiting a woman’s fertility intentions. CONTRIBUTION
We corroborated that joblessness inhibits positive fertility intentions and facilitates
negative fertility intentions. But we also added that these associations are much more
pronounced when joblessness has been persistent. Disregarding the role of persistence
in joblessness, scholars might underestimate the importance of individual-risk factors
linked to labour market biographies in fertility planning. We additionally illustrated that
accounting for regional labour market dynamics, thus placing one’s own level of
persistence in joblessness in context, is pivotal
An Analysis of the Residential Segregation of Foreigners in the Municipality of Palermo
No full textEthnic 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 paper 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 nationalities are people from China, Côte D'Ivoire, and Bangladesh, while Romanians present the lowest level of segregation
Le sorprese positive dai territori
No full textIl capitolo mostra come nonostante il quadro nazionale sembri dominato da preoccupazioni demografiche, alcune aree del Paese presentano segni di vitalità inaspettata. In un’Italia che invecchia e vede calare la natalità, emergono territori che sfidano le tendenze negative, grazie a dinamiche migratorie e sociali che infondono nuova linfa. L’Emilia-Romagna, ad esempio, si distingue per la capacità di attrarre giovani e studenti, creando un circolo virtuoso che riduce l’invecchiamento e mantiene la popolazione attiva. Allo stesso modo, il capitolo mette in luce come in Sardegna e Sicilia esistano gruppi di comuni con longevità eccezionale, le cui comunità sembrano nascondere i segreti di una vita lunga e sana. Anche sulla distribuzione territoriale della popolazione straniera vengono sfatate alcune narrazioni dominanti: gli immigrati non si concentrano solo nelle grandi città e talvolta contribuiscono in maniera significativa a bilanciare il declino demografico locale. Queste "sorprese demografiche" dimostrano quanto sia cruciale guardare oltre le medie nazionali e analizzare i fenomeni a livello locale e/o sub-locale, fornendo indicazioni preziose per politiche territoriali più efficaci e mirate. Una lettura che sfida il pessimismo e invita a ripensare il futuro demografico dell’Italia.The chapter highlights the unexpected demographic vitality and territorial heterogeneity observed in population dynamics, distribution of foreign residents, and longevity patterns. These findings contrast with broader national demographic concerns, highlighting localized divergences from expected trends. In an aging Italy with declining birth rates, some territories defy negative trends thanks to migratory and social dynamics that bring new life. While the overall Italian population has essentially halted its growth and fertility remains low, the Emilia-Romagna region have experienced significant and beneficial population dynamism, both Italian and foreign citizens, with substantial inflows and outflows. The region stands out for its ability to attract young people and students, creating a virtuous cycle that reduces aging and keeps the population active.
Similarly, the age distribution of the population at the local level also reveals specificities that highlight ’positive surprises’ within a predominantly pessimistic narrative of demographic dynamics. While it is undeniable that Italy is a rapidly and intensely aging country, posing challenges for the healthcare, pension, and social assistance systems, it is also true that the country is characterized by exceptional levels of longevity. Sardinia has known as one the blue zones with exceptional longevity but also in Sicily there are groups of municipalities, which seem to hold the secrets to a long and healthy life and could make this region included in the list of areas with high longevity in the future.
The chapter also debunks myths about the settlement models of the foreign population. Observing the geographical distribution of the population by citizenship reveals a country characterized by a relatively smaller foreign presence as one moves from North to South. But immigrants are not only concentrated in large cities and sometimes significantly contribute to balancing local demographic decline.
These ‘demographic surprises’ demonstrate how crucial it is to look beyond national averages and analyse phenomena at the sub-national and, in particular, at the local level, providing valuable insights for more effective and targeted territorial policies. This is particularly true (and significant) in Italy because, unlike other EU countries, it has a highly complex orographic and geomorphological landscape and deeply rooted local identities and spatial disparities. A careful look at the local heterogeneity can highlight geographical peculiarities that may not be visible in a large-scale overall view. Therefore, the chapter urges and pushes into a ‘local thinking’ approach in demographic studies and contributes to the design of effective and targeted municipal policies
The role of the accumulation of poverty and unemployment for health disadvantages
No full textHealth 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 contrast, only more recent episodes in poverty have a negative effect on women’s health
Measuring Vulnerability of Asylum Seekers and Refugees in Italy
No full textIn 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 new approach based on latent trait analysis, which accounts for measurement error and correlation between indicators. This analysis shows that forced migrants from Asia are more vulnerable than those from Africa, and that vulnerability is consistently lower in informal settlements in the regions of Lazio and Piedmont, and consistently higher in Apulia. However, other factors predicting vulnerability often change depending upon the way in which vulnerability is measured. Our findings have implications for the design of social protection and inclusion policies, as well as future research that measures vulnerability
Intergenerational transmission of disadvanteges in the Italian labour market: evidence from AD-SILC data = Trasmissione intergenerazionale delle diseguaglianze: evidenze dai dati AD-SILC
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Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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