1,721,234 research outputs found
Do older poor Europeans haveless access to home ownership? Evidence from the SHARE survey
No full textHome-ownership is the most important asset among old people in Europe,but so far very little is known about gender differences. This paper is aimedn at exploring the link between gender, family type, monetary poverty and home tenure among older European population. The analysis is carried out on a SHARE 2.0.1 sub-sample of about 28.000 individuals, aged 50 or over,
living in Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Spain, and Sweden. A multinomial regression model is used to delineate the profile of old people excluded from home ownership distinguishing between tenant and rent-free, controlling for a plurality of covariates. Results reveal a more complex picture than simple predictions.
Other things being equal, women are more likely to be excluded from home ownership than men and they more often belong the rent-free categories. Women are more protected when they live in couples. Overall, poor people appear more likely to be excluded from home ownership than the not poor, especially if they are women living in enlarged families or men and women
living alone
Does love laugh at locksmiths? Partnership quality during the lockdown in Italy, France and Spain. Some descriptive findings
Full text linkThis study contributes to the growing strand of research on the repercussions of the COVID-19 pandemic. The home confinement imposed as part of nationwide movement restrictions in many countries represents an exceptional setting for the study of intimate relationships. Did the lockdown reduce partnership quality? In this study, we present some descriptive findings based on a recent online survey conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic in France, Italy and Spain. Around 12% of those interviewed in the three countries reported that their relationship with their partner had worsened during the lockdown. In addition, we show that negative emotions – such as feeling lonely – and deterioration of income/work conditions are associated with a worsening of partnership quality. In all, we suggest that the consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic are not only economic; couples and intimate relationships are also vulnerable. This study plants first a seed that will – we hope – germinate in future studies on the topic
Work–family conflict moderates the relationship between childbearing and subjective well-being
No full textMany empirical studies find that parents are not as happy as non-parents or that parenthood exerts a negative effect on subjective well-being (SWB). We add to these findings by arguing that there is a key moderating factor that has been overlooked in previous research, i.e. the level of work–family conflict. We hypothesize that the birth of a child means an increase in the level of work–family tension, which may be substantial for some parents and relatively weak for others. To outline such an approach, we estimate fixed-effects models using panel data from the Household, Income and Labor Dynamics in Australia survey. We find that childbearing negatively affects SWB only when parents, mothers in particular, face a substantial work–family conflict, providing thus support for our hypothesis
Employed women and marital union stability: it helps when men help
No full textA new strand of studies has called into question standard microeconomic predictions of a positive association between women’s economic independence and marital union dissolution. We investigate whether and how the gender division of labor channels the impact of women’s employment on marital union disruption, utilizing data on heterosexual couples from the 2003 and 2007 waves of the Italian nationally representative “Family and Social Subject” survey (N = 2,871) and applying techniques of mediation analysis. We suggest that women’s employment does not have a negative effect per se on union stability, and that women’s paid work becomes detrimental to the stability of the union only if the men’s contribution to unpaid work is limited
COVID-19 and Relationship Quality. Emotional, Working and Organizational Spheres
Full text linkThis study contributes to the growing literature on the repercussions of the COVID- 19 pandemic for family functioning, with a special focus on couples’ relationship quality. We advance an analytical model that emphasizes the role of three main stressors of relationship quality during the pandemic: namely, emotional, paid work-related and organizational stressors. To outline such an approach, we analyze whether the onset of the pandemic – and the home confinement that followed – has reduced relationship quality in France, Italy and Spain using survey data collected in April 2020. We show that relationship quality decreased for a non-negligible part of the population, and that this result was driven mostly by the emotional stressor. These negative effects on relationship quality appeared to be relatively stable across genders, different levels of network support and countries; which suggests that the severity of the lockdown measures outweighed the traditional moderating factors usually accounted for in family research
Union Formation under Conditions of Uncertainty: The Objective and Subjective Sides of Employment Uncertainty
Full text linkBACKGROUND The link between economic forces and family dynamics has received renewed attention in the present era of heightened uncertainty. Economic uncertainty has usually been linked to unfavorable labor market circumstances, such as unemployment and short-term contracts. Nonetheless, union formation may also be affected by subjective appraisals of employment conditions, including employment security and - acknowledging the prospective nature of uncertainty itself expectations of future employment.
OBJECTIVE This study seeks to empirically disentangle the effects of the objective and subjective sides of individual employment uncertainty on the entry into union.
METHODS We apply event history techniques to longitudinal data taken from the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) survey to examine whether and how objective measures of employment uncertainty (labor market status and contract type) and subjective measures (employment security and employment expectations) are associated with entry into a first union.
RESULTS Our results show that objective markers of employment uncertainty - unemployment or temporary (casual) jobs - inhibit entry into a union for both men and women. Furthermore, different appraisals of employment uncertainty affect union formation across employment conditions. When individuals face objective employment uncertainty while still expecting their employment situation to improve, either by exiting unemployment (in particular among men) or retaining their jobs (among both sexes), union formation is not necessarily postponed.
CONTRIBUTIO NWe stress the importance of considering how different future expectations influence family formation across different levels of objective uncertainty. The sole use of objective markers of employment uncertainty provides only a partial, and possibly inaccurate, perspective on union formation: the specter of the future also matters
Is the Effect of Job Uncertainty on Fertility Intentions Channeled by Subjective Well-Being?
Full text linkThis article combines two apparently distinct strands of contemporary research on fertility: the literature on economic uncertainty and fertility; and the literature on subjective well-being and fertility. We advance the hypothesis that the impact of jobs with uncertain conditions on fertility intentions is channeled by an individual’s level of subjective well-being, which captures also unmeasured amenities of the job, including prestige, work-life balance, or welfare provision. To offer evidence for this hypothesis, we apply techniques of
mediation analysis to data from two rounds of the European Social Survey (ESS 2004 and 2010). Our analysis suggested that the effect of jobs with uncertain conditions on fertility intentions depends on the level of subjective well-being: the negative effect is found only when subjective well-being is relatively low (i.e. life satisfaction levels equal or below six). Detailed results show that parents and older individuals have lower fertility intentions than childless and younger individuals when they have a job with uncertain conditions and a consequent low subjective well-being. We also found that – while the economic crisis was underway in 2010 – it was especially the deterioration in men’s position in the labor market that was associated with lower fertility plans
LABOUR MARKET CIRCUMSTANCES AND FERTILITY IN ITALY: A FIRST GLANCE THROUGH ADSILC DATA
Full text linkA number of studies have shown that economic uncertainty could have significant impacts on fertility: youth unemployment, term-limited working contracts, and unstable employment conditions may lead to a postponement in childbearing. Following this line of research and focusing on ADSILC data (a dataset that merge individuals’ work history patterns with their socio-economic characteristics), the aim of this paper is to evaluate the effects of the employment status and characteristics on the probability to have a child. As we might expect, data show significant differences both at the cohort level and at the territorial level; we also find that women in different statuses (i.e., unemployed, permanent contract, temporary contract) experience different dynamics over time in terms of probability to have a child and in the timing of the first transition to motherhood. Even if the path to thorough knowledge of these phenomena is still long, we are aware that the use of ADSILC data open up new perspectives in fertility research for Italy, as they offer the possibility to follow couples over time, considering the combination of partners’ employment status and characteristics
- …
