1,721,025 research outputs found
Educational expansion without equalization: social origins and children’s choice of the upper secondary track in Italy (1958-1989)
No full textThe social stratification in parent-child relationships after separation: Evidence from Italy
Full text linkObjective: We investigate the association between parental separation during childhood and later parent-child contact frequency and whether it varies according to parental gender and education.
Background: Separated parents, particularly fathers, have fewer contacts with their adult children than partnered parents. However, recent research suggests that highly educated parents are more involved, as they invest more in children before and after union dissolution.
Method: Using data on young adult children (18-40) from two Italian surveys, random intercept models adjusted for sample selection bias were adopted to analyse the association between parental separation and later parent-child contact frequency.
Results: Our findings show that adult children who experienced parental separation have less frequent face-to-face and phone contact with their parents. The negative association is stronger among fathers, but mother-child face-to-face interactions are also affected. Higher education does not reduce the effect of separation but even worsens it, at least with regard to face-to-face contact frequency.
Conclusion: Our results suggest that in a country like Italy, characterised by a limited occurrence of separations and a traditional division of gender roles, particularly within the analysed parental cohorts, higher parental education does not mitigate the negative effects of divorce on parent-child relationships but may even exacerbate the
La crescita delle unioni miste in Italia: un indicatore di accresciuta integrazione degli immigrati e maggiore apertura della società?
No full textGli autori esaminano i matrimoni misti tra italiani e straniere provenienti da paesi ad alta pressione migratoria, in particolare dall'Europa dell'Est. Coerentemente con la teoria dello scambio, tali unioni deviano dallo standard di assortative mating: le donne sono sistematicamente più istruite e più giovani dei loro partner italiani. La considerazione della prospettiva della partner straniera mette in luce la salienza dei fattori socio-economici e delle condizioni legali dei migranti in Italia. L'analisi della prospettiva del partner italiano pone invece all'attenzione il progressivo "spiazzamento" degli uomini poco istruiti sul mercato matrimoniale. A ciò si aggiunge una spiegazione culturale, legata alla maggiore conformità delle donne straniere ai valori tradizionali di genere degli uomini italiani. Nel complesso, i risultati smentiscono una semplicistica lettura della crescita delle unioni miste come indicatore di accresciuta integrazione degli immigrati e apertura della società
The impact of citizenship on intermarriage: Quasi-experimental evidence from two European Union Eastern enlargements
Full text linkBackground: According to assimilation theory, the more immigrants are integrated within host countries the more likely they are to intermarry. However, status exchange theory argues instead that when integration is low, immigrants may use intermarriage as a means of improving their integration prospects in host countries, in which case an increase in levels of integration would reduce immigrants' propensity to intermarry. Objective: To test these two hypotheses, this paper assesses the causal effect of a positive shift in immigrants' level of integration, namely the acquisition of citizenship, on intermarriage in Italy. Over the past 20 years Italy has experienced an unprecedented growth in intermarriage involving primarily Eastern European women. Methods: We study two EU Eastern enlargements, following which citizens of the new EU member countries became EU citizens and thus experienced a marked improvement in their legal status. We apply the synthetic control method to data on marriages between native men and foreign women. Results: We find that the acquisition of citizenship has a significant negative impact on immigrant women's propensity to marry native men. That impact is much greater for immigrants coming from less affluent countries. Conclusions: Our results support the status exchange hypothesis. This can be explained by the poor socioeconomic integration and precarious legal status of immigrants in Italy. Contribution: The growth of intermarriage per se cannot be seen as an indicator of greater immigrant integration. The negative impact of citizenship acquisition on immigrants' propensity to intermarry also calls for a rethinking of the role of institutions such as marriage and citizenship in the process of immigrant integration
Crescere con un solo genitore: studenti nativi e immigrati a confronto.
No full textChi cresce con un solo genitore ha risultati scolastici peggiori, ma
ci sono differenze a seconda del background migratorio? In un recente studio su studenti di scuola media in Italia, Raffaele Guetto, Francesca Zanasi, e Maria Carella, mostrano come gli studenti italiani siano più svantaggiati dall’assenza di un genitore rispetto a quelli immigrati. Lo studio ricerca i motivi della differenza nelle risorse a disposizione delle famiglie e nel motivo di assenza genitoriale
Educational expansion without equalization: a reappraisal of the ‘Effectively Maintained Inequality’ hypothesis in children’s choice of the upper secondary track
Full text linkPrevious studies of trends in social inequalities in upper secondary track choices in Italy found evidence that, in the period of highest educational expansion, horizontal inequalities increased, consistently with the Effectively Maintained Inequality thesis (EMI). Our paper, focusing on the youngest birth cohorts (1958–1989), documents that enrolments at upper secondary schools have become almost universal and have been followed by a huge expansion of the academic track. Although the latter has also involved children from the lowest social strata, our evidence suggests that their relative disadvantage to attend the academic track, compared to the most privileged social groups, has diminished only slightly. When distinguishing between different curricula within the academic track, we found evidence supporting the EMI hypothesis also among recent cohorts: the expansion of the academic track has gone hand-in-hand with increasing social inequalities in the chances to attend more prestigious curricula. Finally, social class inequalities in the chances of enrolling at the academic track are stronger at high levels of parental education, while they are largely muted among low-educated parents. We suggest the latter as a possible mechanism to explain why educational expansion may not produce a decline in the association between social origins and educational attainment
Do Mixed Unions Foster Integration? The Educational Outcomes of Mixed-Parentage Children in Italy
No full textWe investigate the nexus between intermarriage and immigrant integration by analyzing mixed-parentage children’s educational outcomes. We use Italian Labor Force Survey data to compare the upper secondary school participation of children of different types of mixed unions with that of children of two native and two migrant couples. Our results show that mixed-parentage children perform halfway between natives and immigrants, but their educational careers are highly heterogeneous. Among families with non-Western origins, mixed-parentage children improve substantially with respect to their peers with two migrant parents. But if the mother was born abroad, the children still exhibit higher dropout risks and lower general school enrolment as compared to children of natives and all other mixed-parentage children. A pivotal role in accounting for this educational disadvantage is played by the higher incidence in this specific type of union of nonstandard family dynamics and household fragilities that may give rise to less parental monitoring and lower educational performance. This finding is consistent with a prediction based on the status exchange theory, according to which such unions are more likely affected by instability and conflict
A Reflection on Economic Uncertainty and Fertility in Europe: The Narrative Framework
Full text linkThe generalized and relatively homogeneous fertility decline across European countries in the aftermath of the Great Recession poses serious challenges to our knowledge of contemporary low fertility patterns. In this paper, we argue that fertility decisions are not a mere “statistical shadow of the past”, and advance the Narrative Framework, a new approach to the relationship between economic uncertainty and fertility. This framework proffers that individuals act according to or despite uncertainty based on their “narrative of the future” – imagined futures embedded in social elements and their interactions. We also posit that personal narratives of the future are shaped by the “shared narratives” produced by socialization agents, including parents and peers, as well as by the narratives produced by the media and other powerful opinion formers. Finally, within this framework, we propose several empirical strategies, from both a qualitative and a quantitative perspective, including an experimental approach, for assessing the role of narratives of the future in fertility decisions
Structural and Cultural Determinants of Fertility and Female Labour Market Participation in Italy and Europe
No full textThe thesis contributes to the explanation of two well-documented phenomena: the strong decline in fertility rates and the parallel increase in female labour market participation which occurred in the last decades in most OECD countries. The argument is studied by means of a European comparison and an in-depth analysis of the Italian case. An innovative aspect of the work is the combination of cultural and structural explanations. In fact, the main argument of the thesis is that cross-national differences and the puzzling Italian and Southern European pattern of low fertility and low female labour market participation should be understood as stemming from the interplay between different factors, related to a structural – Welfare Regimes and the Economic Theory of the Family – and a cultural theoretical framework – the Second Demographic Transition and the distinction between “strong” and “weak” family systems.
In detail, the thesis shows empirically how both women’s opportunity-costs and households’ economic resources as well as family values and preferences are useful to understand fertility and female labour market participation behaviours. ILFI (Indagine Longitudinale sulle Famiglie Italiane, 1997-2005) data have been used to demonstrate how individual- and household-level mechanisms, connected with social stratification, underlying the transition to parenthood and female labour market participation around childbirths are coherent with the Italian familialistic institutional setting. Italy is an interesting case not least because of its strong regional heterogeneity, which concerns also the family formation process. Adopting an epidemiological approach, ILFI and IARD data on the condition of youth (2004) are exploited to show how the regional heterogeneity in family behaviours within Italy, such as the lower age at parenthood and the higher fertility rates in Southern regions in the selected cohorts, may be largely explained by differences in family values. This first hint suggesting the role of culture on demographic behaviours is developed further in a comparative setting using EVS (European Values Study, 1990-2008) data. The latter allowed to assess directly the importance of values and attitudes for women’s labour market participation and fertility decisions in 15 European countries. Finally, the comparison between the different paths followed by Italy and the Netherlands in the last thirty years is discussed as an example of how changes in the institutional settings in order to foster work-family reconciliation are deeply embedded within wider processes of social change.
Based on the developed theoretical framework and the results of the mentioned empirical analyses, the author attempts to integrate different streams of the literature and presents an argumentation about the complex interplay between interests, ideas and institutions underlying fertility and female labour market participation trends and patterns
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