Retirement rigidities and the gap between effective and desired labour supply by older workers

Our paper analyses the observed and desired labour supply of older workers and (recent) retirees in a country (Italy) with limited opportunities for exible work schedules. For this purpose, we use a unique dataset drawn from the Bank of Italy's Survey on Household Income and Wealth (SHIW) providing information on both desired and actual working hours. Our empirical analysis documents the gap between older individuals' desired and observed labour supply at both the extensive and the intensive margins and traces it back to gender, education and family composition. The paper provides useful insights into the potential effectiveness of policies such as gradual retirement and part-time work in increasing older workers' employment

Impact of ageing on curative health-care workforce in Italy, Supplement D to the NEUJOBS WP D 12.1

In this report we have summarized the characteristics of the supply and demand for health-care workforce in Italy in the last decade and their expected development for the future. Population ageing process will augment sizeably the demand for health-care, while the growth of the supply side appears to be limited by the consequences of the undergoing economic crisis and by the public budget problems that the country has to face. Such a trend can create severe problems to the public health-care system

Long-term Care Workforce in Italy, Supplement C to the NEUJOBS WP D.12.2

In this report we have summarized the characteristics of supply and demand for the long-term care workforce in Italy in the last decade and their expected development for the future. Italy still lacks a well structured system of intervention in favour of the disabled and the elderly in need. Most of the care burden is left to families that cope with it by directly providing informal caregiving or by hiring carers out-of-pocked. The population ageing process will augment sizeably the demand for long-term care in the future, while on the one hand the provision of informal caregiving will probably diminish as a consequence of the increasing participation of women in the labour market, and, on the other hand, the economic crisis has reduced the resources that families can address to hire carers. In addition, the market of carers, currently dominated by cash in hand positions, needs to be regulated

"Educating Children to Save: an Experimental Approach to Financial Education of Pupils in Primary Schools", Dipartimento di Economia e Statistica "Cognetti de Martiis" WP 2/2015

Financial education is today a primary issue. We experimentally test whether a programme (“treatment”) of financial education on savings, targeted to children aged 8 and 9, is effective and to what extent. We measure the interest rate required by the children before and after the treatment to accept to postpone a reward, compute its variation and compare this with that of a control group. We find that children are sensitive to the programme, and that this decreases the children’s impatience. We also find some gender differences that cast some doubts about the gender neutrality of programmes of financial education