Wives' work and income distribution in European countries

Women's participation in the labour market varies substantially across Europe. While female participation rates are usually high in Northern countries, they decline as one moves South, where more traditional household models still predominate and women devote more time to domestic rather than to labour-market activities. At the same time, income is more equally distributed in Northern than in Southern European countries. This paper takes a cross-country approach to analyse the impact of wives' work on income distribution, using the last wave of the ECHP (European Community Household Panel) data set. Decompositions of inequality measures and counterfactual distributions are used to assess the impact of higher female employment rates on inequality in household income distribution. The decomposition of inequality by household type shows that income in all the countries studied is distributed more equally among dual-earner than among male-breadwinner households. Since the percentage of dual-earner families is higher in Northern European countries, inequality is lower. Sub-group analysis also shows that within-group inequality is the main source of inequality in all countries concerned, while between-groups inequality has a lower impact. Decomposition by sources of income reveals that, in European countries, women's earnings account for a lower proportion of overall inequality than men's earnings and that the impact of women's work on income distribution is mainly due to the "employment effect": wherever women work less, inequality in women's earnings distribution is higher, due to the higher number of zero values in the distribution. Moreover, analysis of inequality among working wives shows that female labour income is often distributed more equally where women's employment rate is higher. Finally, counterfactual distributions are used to show that an increase in women's participation in the labour market can cause a decrease in household income distribution inequality.Female employment ; Inequality decomposition

Workers on the Border between Employment and Self-employment

The number of workers on the border between self-employment and employment strongly increased across Europe over the last decade. This paper investigates whether and in what respect these workers differ from employees and self-employed and analyses whether these work relationships are a stepping stone to more stable employment in the short-run using Italian data. Depending on the data source the “para-subordinates” represent between 1.8% and 5.3% of the Italian labour force. Since most of them work only for one company and are strongly integrated into the firm of the contract partner, we argue that labour and social security law discriminates against these workers who are in fact very close to employees. We find that they are not low qualified workers, but young, highly educated professionals. At the same time these contracts are not a port of entry into the labour market nor do we find that they are a vehicle to more stable jobs. However, they are a possibility for women to work part-time.Self-employment, Dependency, Outsourcing.

Wives' work and income distribution in European countries

Women's participation in the labour market varies substantially across Europe. While female participation rates are usually high in Northern countries, they decline as one moves South, where more traditional household models still predominate and women devote more time to domestic rather than to labour-market activities. At the same time, income is more equally distributed in Northern than in Southern European countries. This paper takes a cross-country approach to analyse the impact of wives' work on income distribution, using the last wave of the ECHP (European Community Household Panel) data set. Decompositions of inequality measures and counterfactual distributions are used to assess the impact of higher female employment rates on inequality in household income distribution. The decomposition of inequality by household type shows that income in all the countries studied is distributed more equally among dual-earner than among male-breadwinner households. Since the percentage of dual-earner families is higher in Northern European countries, inequality is lower. Sub-group analysis also shows that within-group inequality is the main source of inequality in all countries concerned, while between-groups inequality has a lower impact. Decomposition by sources of income reveals that, in European countries, women's earnings account for a lower proportion of overall inequality than men's earnings and that the impact of women's work on income distribution is mainly due to the "employment effect": wherever women work less, inequality in women's earnings distribution is higher, due to the higher number of zero values in the distribution. Moreover, analysis of inequality among working wives shows that female labour income is often distributed more equally where women's employment rate is higher. Finally, counterfactual distributions are used to show that an increase in women's participation in the labour market can cause a decrease in household income distribution inequality

What does the stork bring to women's working career?

Many studies have been devoted to analyse the effect of maternity on working mothers; they mostly refer to countries where female participation is high. Fewer studies consider Southern European countries. This paper aims at filling the gap analysing the effects of motherhood on women’s working career in Italy, a neat example of Southern European country where female participation is increasing but still low and where the decrease in trade unions’ power increased wage disparities. Our results show that conditional average wages of mothers become significantly lower than those of non-mothers after childbirth, showing no sign of a closing gap 5 years afterward. However, this penalty does not emerge for mothers moving to a part-time job; hence - differently from the existing literature - we highlight the potential role of part-time jobs in mitigating the "reduced effort" effect of childrearing. Furthermore, we estimate a significant increase in the probability of transition from employment to non-employment for new mothers. The probability is higher the lower the pre-childbirth wage. However, this penalty is reduced by the availability of part-time jobs in mothers’ relevant labour market. Hence again it emerges the potential role of part-time jobs in mitigating the negative effect of childbirth on women’s labour market participation. the support for flexibility among the least productive employed workers. The model described provides some new insights on the comparative dynamics of labor market institutions in the U.S. and in Europe over the last few decades, shedding some new light both on the reasons for the original build-up of "Eurosclerosis," and for its the persistence up to the present day.motherhood, part-time jobs, wage penalty, career.

What does the stork bring to women's working career?

Many studies have been devoted to analyse the effect of maternity on working mothers; they mostly refer to countries where female participation is high. Fewer studies consider Southern European countries. This paper aims at filling the gap analysing the effects of motherhood on women’s working career in Italy, a neat example of Southern European country where female participation is increasing but still low and where the decrease in trade unions’ power increased wage disparities. Our results show that conditional average wages of mothers become significantly lower than those of non-mothers after childbirth, showing no sign of a closing gap 5 years afterward. However, this penalty does not emerge for mothers moving to a part-time job; hence - differently from the existing literature - we highlight the potential role of part-time jobs in mitigating the "reduced effort" effect of childrearing. Furthermore, we estimate a significant increase in the probability of transition from employment to non-employment for new mothers. The probability is higher the lower the pre-childbirth wage. However, this penalty is reduced by the availability of part-time jobs in mothers’ relevant labour market. Hence again it emerges the potential role of part-time jobs in mitigating the negative effect of childbirth on women’s labour market participation. the support for flexibility among the least productive employed workers. The model described provides some new insights on the comparative dynamics of labor market institutions in the U.S. and in Europe over the last few decades, shedding some new light both on the reasons for the original build-up of "Eurosclerosis," and for its the persistence up to the present day.motherhood, part-time jobs, wage penalty, career.

What Does the Stork Bring to Women’s Working Career?

We analyse the effects of motherhood on women’s working career using WHIP, a database that records individual work histories together with childbearing events. We investigate two main issues: the career penalty and the wage penalty (better known in the literature as family wage gap). We focus on a group of women (i) highly attached to the labour market before maternity, and (ii) that have only one child. Hence, we search for penalties among those who are less likely to experience them, providing a lower bound of the average penalty in the whole population. With respect to the former penalty, we focus on selection of women out of employment after childbirth and we find a significant increase in the probability of transition from employment to non-employment for new mothers. Moreover part time mothers are less likely to exit, pointing to part time as a family-friendly contract. With respect to wages, we restrict the analysis to continuously working women and analyse their wage profiles following a difference in differences approach. We find that conditional average wage of future mothers is significantly higher than that of non mothers before childbearing and it becomes significantly lower afterward, showing no sign of a closing gap after 4 years.motherhood, employment transitions, wage penalty, career.

On Intergenerational Transmission of Reading Habits in Italy: Is a Good Example the Best Sermon?

The intergenerational transmission of preference and attitudes has been less investigated in the literature than the intergenerational transmission of education and income. Using the Italian Time Use Survey (2002-2003) conducted by ISTAT, we analyse the intergenerational transmission of reading habits: are children more likely to allocate time to studying and reading when they observe their parents doing the same activity? The intergeneration transmission of attitudes towards studying and reading can be explained by both cultural and educational transmission from parents to children and by imitating behaviours. The latter channel is of particular interest, since it entails a direct influence parents may have on child's preference formation through their role model, and it opens the scope for active policies aimed at promoting good parents' behaviours. We follow two fundamental approaches to estimation: a "long run" model, consisting of OLS intergenerational type regressions for the reading habit, and "short run" household fixed effect models, where we aim at identifying the impact of the role model exerted by parents, exploiting different exposure of sibling to parents' example within the same household. Our long run results show that children are more likely to read and study when they live with parents that are used to read. Mothers seem to be more important than fathers in this type of intergenerational transmission. Moreover, the short run analysis shows that there is an imitation effect: in the day of the survey children are more likely to read after they saw either the mother or the father reading.intergenerational transmission of preferences; parental role model; imitation; household fixed effects

Asymmetries and interdependencies in time use between Italian parents

In recent decades, changes in parents' attitudes towards the importance of spending time with children to optimise their future behaviour and cognitive development have greatly affected patterns of time allocation among both working and non-working parents in all developed countries. We compare the two waves of the Italian Time Use dataset (1988 and 2002) to analyze how family time allocation changed over time in a country that was undergoing a marked increase in female employment rate and a continuous decline in total fertility rate. We focus especially on how parents' time with their children depends on their employment status and household characteristics. Using a simultaneous sequential approach, we consider links among the different time uses of individuals and correlations with spouses' decisions. We find that wives' time at work time strongly influences the time spent by both spouses with their children in 2002, but not in 1988. Fathers were much more involved in childcare and rearing in 2002 than in 1988. In general, as women's work time increased, substitutes for their childcare time were found within the household (fathers or other co-resident adults)

Being Working Poor or Feeling Working Poor? The Role of Work Intensity and Job Stability for Subjective Poverty

Low work intensity and high job instability are crucial micro-determinants of in-work poverty. Importantly, they might also affect subjective poverty in households that are above the poverty threshold. We contribute to the literature by studying the relationship between subjective and objective in-work poverty and how this relationship is affected by household members' job characteristics. We use data from the 2014 wave of the Italian module of the EU-SILC survey. Italy is an interesting case as - similarly to other Southern European countries - the share of individuals and households reporting subjective hardship is strikingly high compared to the levels reported in other EU areas. We find no statistically significant differences in the association between subjective poverty and different degrees of objective poverty by different levels of work intensity. Conversely, subjective poverty is positively associated with the instability of household members' job contracts. We argue that policies aimed at increasing work intensity rather than work stability might not help to reduce subjective poverty as well as its (negative) spillover effects on other life domains - such as well-being, adequate levels of consumption, and social integration