Childcare and participation at work in North-East Italy. Why do Italian and foreign mothers behave differently?

This paper examines two of the decision-making processes following the birth of a child: whether a working mother should continue with her job, and whether the couple should provide the child with formal childcare. Focusing on Padova and its district (North-East Italy), differences in the strategies of Italian and foreign mothers are discussed, controlling for socio-economic status, opinions on women's roles, and family structure, according to the Blinder-Oaxaca decomposition. Six to thirty-six months after the birth of a child, the proportion of foreign mothers who are not employed is more than double that of Italian mothers (51% vs. 21%). In addition, 25% of Italian women entrust their children to the care of their parents and in-laws, vs. only 13% of foreign women. Although there are differences in the effects of individual characteristics on participation at work across the two groups, what matters most is the different composition of the Italian and foreign women's groups, especially as regards education, partners’ characteristics and attitudes towards the job market and motherhood. As regards the maximum price a couple is willing to pay for formal childcare, intended to represent parents’ preferences for formal childcare, differences between the two groups are also mainly explained by differences in composition

La demografia del Centro e Nord Italia all'alba dell'età moderna. Un confronto fra dati di stato di tre aree: Legnago (VR), Contado di Lucca e Varesotto. The population of North and Central Italy at the beginning of Modern Age. A comparison of the state of population of three sites: Legnago, country of Lucca, Varesotto.

Introduced centuries before the appearance of parish registries and the Stati Animarum, fiscal cadastres provide precious information concerning demographic differences within Italy during the Late Middle Ages and early Modern Age. Despite the laborious process of gathering data and some limitations due to incompleteness, cadastres beg consideration in investigations of population trends. In fact, careful analysis reveals a plethora of information concerning both individuals and families. In this article, we compare the demography of three different areas in central-northern Italy: the contado of Lucca in 1411 (Tuscany, 5,792 individuals), the countryside surrounding Varese in 1530 (Lombardy, 2,703), and the city of Legnago in 1430 (Veneto, 2,101). Certainly it is difficult to understand to what extent profound differences in age and sex structure among Lucca, Varese and Legnago were due to diverse demographic dynamics (epidemics, mortality and fertility, selective migrations by sex and age), or instead to disparities in the underreporting of both children (especially female) and unmarried women. Of better quality are the data on age at marriage, family structures, and the cycle of family life, especially for men. In the countryside surrounding Varese and Lucca, men married around the age of 23. The former, however, built a separate nuclear family, while the latter trought their wives to live in the parental home, and thus would wait in some cases more than a decade to become the head of the household. Data from Legnago reveal yet another pattern. Men tended to marry later, followed by a 5-year period of cohabitation in the parental home. Such results are in line with differences by types of family distribution. The great territorial diversity of family structures and nuptial norms characteristic of 18th and 19th century Italy were already present three to four centuries earlier

A difficult social mobility: the education of children of southern parents emigrated to central and north Italy

Internal migrations among regions have been one of the most important events in the recent Italian history with consequences that are still noticeable. Nevertheless, rarely the attention has been devoted to the destiny and integration of immigrant families from the South. Through multi-generational survey data, we evaluated the educational attainments reached by children of immigrants from the South to the North of Italy in comparison with children of non-movers parents (both in the area of arrival and departure), controlling for many family features strictly related to children education as parents\u2019 socio-economic position, parents\u2019 education and family size. Ceteris paribus, children of immigrants born in the North (second generations stricto sensu) have had not significantly different probability to reach the upper secondary level from them with non movers parents whereas, who lived migration with their parents (generation 1.5), has been clearly disadvantaged. Therefore, for G2 the chances in terms of education are not related to family migration history but only to social and demographic conditions owned by parents. On the other hand, G1.5 show problems linked to the interruption of educational career. These results are evident for the North-West of Italy but are not so clear in the Middle North-East

The determinants of leaving the parental home in Italy: 2012-18.

Using the longitudinal structure of the Istat Italian Labor Force Survey, we follow for 15 months the 77.700 young people aged 19-34 who, at the first interview during 2012-18, lived in their parental home, dividing them into four groups (Italian men, Italian women, foreign men, foreign women). In the fourth interview, 15 months after the first one, 16% of them are no longer resident with their parents. The main objective of this work is to model the probabilities of leaving the parental home with the characteristics of young people at the first interview, using logistic regression. The young Italians most likely to leave their parental home are those employed full-time, regardless of gender and type of contract (fixed-term or openended). Students remain more frequently with parents irrespective of gender and citizenship. Only for Italians, leaving home is faster if the family of origin is large and the parents are more educated