Changing Paths to Adulthood in Italy. Men and Women Entering Stable Work and Family Careers

Paths to adulthood have changed greatly in the last decades: entries into the labour market as well as into partnership or parenthood have been postponed, with also new sequences and interconnections. In this piece of work we observe life-courses from the ages of 14 to 35 of men and women born in four successive cohorts. We distinguish them by level of education, and we analyse the timing and frequencies of their first job, the first job as an insider (as an employee with a permanent contract or as a typical self-employed worker), episodes of atypical work or unemployment between first job and age 35, couple formation, and childbirth. Our analyses confirm that today's young Italians form a 'postponement generation', which achieves later, if at all, what previous generations had already achieved in their twenties. For men, until the cohort born in the 1960s, the norm for both high- and low-educated men was to be insiders at age 35, and to achieve that status rapidly. What has changed is that now men become labour-market insiders later, and the route is more tortuous, with long and repeated spells of unemployment or atypical work. For women – for whom being in employment, and working as insiders, has never been the norm – the change has been their greater involvement in the labour market, but with the greater risk, compared with men, of job insecurity, especially if their education level is low. In the later cohorts, the ages at first marriage or cohabitation and first childbirth have also changed, especially for highly educated men. This is strongly connected with changes in labour market paths, but with gender differences. Not holding an insider position inhibits the assumption of family responsibilities for men. For women economic and job insecurity seem to have less influence on childbirth.Labour market stability and transition to first child; paths to adulthood; gender; education; changes across cohorts

Youth poverty and transition to adulthood in Europe

There is an increasing amount of research focussing on the transition to adulthood, a stage of the life cycle where young people face demanding life decisions, including completion of education, finding stable employment, and establishing their household and family. Whereas there is a well-developed literature on poverty among households in general, very little research has focused on poverty among young adults. Using the European Community Household Panel (ECHP) we provide a detailed description of youth poverty in Europe. Across the European Union youth poverty varies greatly, being higher in Southern European countries, as well as in the ‘liberal’ regimes of the UK and Ireland. However, there are also large variations in the extent of youth poverty within countries, between what we might term 'younger youth' (aged 16-19) and 'older youth' aged (25-29). In the UK, poverty rates among 'younger youth' are much higher than among 'older youth', suggesting that poverty among young people is closely associated with child poverty. In the Scandinavian countries, poverty peaks dramatically in the early twenties, indicating that in these countries, poverty is associated with leaving home

The time benefits of young adult home stayers in France and Italy: a new perspective on the transition to adulthood?

This article analyses how two co-residing generations contribute to the housework workload in Italy and France during the early 2000s. It studies the intergenerational exchange of time between young adults and their parents by indirectly comparing the level of domestic comfort enjoyed by young people in the two closely neighbouring countries. A focus on the reasons for staying in the parental home provides an explanation for the tendency of young Italian adults to prolong their stay in the family nest. The results of time-use surveys suggest that young Italians (especially young men) may benefit more than their French counterparts in co-residing with their parents. Beyond the compositional or structural effects, they perform fewer domestic tasks than their French counterparts, a result that is related to different cultural practices

Similarities and differences between two cohorts of young adults in Italy

The paper analyses the results of a CATI survey, consisting on a representative national sample of 3083 young people of two different generations: the 23-27th and the 33-37th in the first half of 2004. The analysis is particularly targeted at the oldest cohort and investigates on the late transition to adulthood and its effect on fertility. We wonder whether Italian situation is converging to the European one. We also analyse the transition processes to all the events of the "life course" as interrelating mechanisms, where each process is the premise for the next step, but where all are probably considered indispensable for choosing to have a child. The results suggest a diffusion of new family forms among youth but a persistent delay in family formation.delay of family formation, Italy, transition to adulthood

Gender equity and fertility intentions in Italy and the Netherlands

Fertility levels have fallen drastically in most industrialized countries. Diverse theoretical and empirical frameworks have had difficulty in explaining these unprecedented low levels of fertility. More recently, however, attention has turned from classic explanations, such as women’s increased labour market participation, to gender equity as the essential link to understand this phenomenon. The increase in women’s labour market participation did not prompt an increase in men’s domestic duties, which is often referred to women’s ‘dual burden’ or ‘second shift’. Institutions and policies within countries also facilitate or constrain the combination of women’s employment with fertility. This paper provides an empirical test of gender equity theory by examining whether the unequal division of household labour leads to lower fertility intentions of women in different institutional contexts. Italy constitutes a case of high gender inequity, low female labour market participation and the lowest-low fertility. The Netherlands has moderate to low gender inequity, high part-time female labour market participation and comparatively higher fertility. Using data from the 2003 Italian Multipurpose Survey - Family and Social Actors and the 2004/5 Dutch sample from the European Social Survey, a series of logistic regression models test this theory. A central finding is that the unequal division of household labour only has a significant impact on women’s fertility intentions when they already carry the load of high paid work hours or children, a finding that is particularly significant for working women in Italy.fertility, fertility intentions, gender, paid and unpaid work

Albania: Trends and patterns, proximate determinants and policies of fertility change

For a very long time, Albania has had one of the highest levels of fertility in Europe: in 2002 the total fertility rate of 2.2 children per woman was the highest in Europe. Although this current level is high, the country has experienced a rapid fertility reduction during the last 50 years: a TFR decline from 7 to 2.2. This reduction has occurred in the absence of modern contraception and abortion, which indicates the significance of investments in the social agenda during the communist regime that produced policies with indirect effects on fertility. Most significant of these were policies focused on education, in particular on female education. Social and demographic settings for a further fertility reduction in Albania have been present since 1990. Contraception and abortion have been legalized and available since the early 1990s, but knowledge of their use is still not widespread in the country, largely due to the interplay between traditional and modern norms of Albanian society. This chapter points out that future fertility levels will be determined not only by new policies that might be introduced, but predominantly by the balance of this interplay.Albania, childbearing, Europe, fertility, fertility change

The impact of gynecologists' conscientious objection on abortion access

Abstract Although abortion in Italy is free of charge and legal in a broad set of circumstances, 71% of gynecologists are registered as conscientious objectors, i.e. they are exempted from performing abortions for reasons of religious or moral beliefs. To assess whether this practice limits abortion access, we analyze aggregate regional data on abortion and a dataset of over one million clinical records of single interventions performed between 2002 and 2016. Results, from both cross-regional panel data and microdata analysis, suggest that conscientious objection hampers abortion access at the local level, being a significant driver of a woman's decision of having an abortion out of the region of residence and leading to longer waiting times to have one. Conscientious objection appears to have a stronger impact on women living in lower-income regions or experiencing other forms of economic disadvantage

Is the Effect of Job Uncertainty on Fertility Intentions Channeled by Subjective Well-Being?

This 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