Raffaele Guetto
Biographic Data
| ID | 120703 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Raffaele Guetto |
| GIVEN NAMES | Raffaele |
| FAMILY NAME | Guetto |
| SIGNATURE | GUETTO R |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Florence |
| ORCID | 0000-0001-8052-9809 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 36 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 239 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 36 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2013 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 10 |
Value Change and the New Wave of Fertility Postponement in Western Europe
Since 2010, Western Europe has experienced a renewed wave of fertility postponement, contributing to declining fertility rates and rising childlessness. Although multiple explanations have been proposed, the role of ideational factors remains underexplored. This study examines whether broad changes in values help explain contemporary fertility postponement, drawing on the framework of the Second Demographic Transition (SDT). We apply Schwartz's t…
Positive effects of his and her income on first births: Couple-level evidence from longitudinal tax data in Italy
This study adopts a couple-level approach to assess whether higher-income women (men) experience lower (higher) fertility due to opportunity costs and conventional gender norms or whether income pooling within couples facilitates parenthood. We test the well-established gendered relationship between income and fertility in Italy, a country historically known for its division of family roles along traditional gender lines. Utilizing longitudinal t…
Intergenerational transmission of home-leaving patterns
Exploiting intergenerationally linked data from the Survey of Health, Ageing, and Retirement in Europe, we examine the association between the home-leaving ages of parents and those of their daughters and sons. We propose a framework in which intergenerational associations between nest-leaving patterns of successive generations might stem from three channels of transmission, and we rely on detailed information on three generations of individuals …
Do Media Narratives of the Economy Affect Childbearing? Findings From Multi-media News Coverage in Germany
The present study posits that economic narratives conveyed by media news outlets shape childbearing, over and above the influence of objective economic constraints. We further advance that this relationship is channeled by individual perceptions of the economy. To test these arguments, we used the amount of negative and positive economic news reported by various German media sources, in combination with microdata from the German Socio-Economic Pa…
Brief Report: Unmet Fertility Desires: Evidence from a Lowest-Low Fertility Context
Italy holds one of the lowest fertility levels and the highest mean age at first birth in Europe, with previous studies pointing to a large gap between achieved and desired fertility. Nevertheless, micro-level evidence on the magnitude of the gap throughout reproductive ages and on the reasons for underachieving remains limited. In this study, we aimed at (1) quantifying the desired-realized fertility gap, i.e., the discrepancy between the desire…
Single Parents’ Subjective Well-being in Europe: A Multilevel Analysis
This study investigates how single parenthood is associated with subjective well-being across European countries, with a particular focus on financial satisfaction, social connectedness, and welfare policy. Moving beyond the traditional dichotomy between single and coupled parents, we introduce a four-category typology that distinguishes between parents who are single or in a couple, and whether they have experienced a divorce. Using multilevel d…
Non-intact families and adolescents’ family satisfaction during the Second Demographic Transition: A test of the institutionalization hypothesis
BACKGROUNDThe institutionalization hypothesis suggests that the negative association between parental separation and children's outcomes diminishes as divorce becomes more socially accepted and widespread.Although the available evidence provides little support for this hypothesis, drawing definitive conclusions remains challenging due to limitations in existing studies. OBJECTIVEUsing a large sample of Italian adolescents (ages 14-19), this study…
Gender Division of Unpaid Work and Relationship Satisfaction: Covid ‐19 as an Engine of Family Reshuffling in Italy
Can Family Policies Enhance Fertility? An Ex Ante Evaluation Through Factorial Survey Experiments
This article explores the family policies–fertility nexus by assessing the potential impact of parental leaves, childcare services, and child benefits on fertility through a factorial survey experiment (FSE). We focus on Italy, where persistently low fertility rates are often linked to limited welfare support for families. We surveyed 4,022 respondents aged 20–44 and exposed them to various scenarios characterized by different family policy packa…
Unstable employment careers and (quasi-)completed fertility: Evidence from the labour market deregulation in Italy
Most research on the fertility consequences of labour market instability has focussed on the transition to parenthood, ignoring potential 'catching up' effects and, thus, the more encompassing view on cohort fertility. This work extends on this point by analysing the consequences of employment instability on (quasi-)completed fertility for men and women in Italy. From a cohort perspective, we look at fertility outcomes at age 41 among those who e…
The changing educational and social class gradients in union dissolution: Evidence from a latecomer of the Second Demographic Transition
Most studies on the changing socioeconomic gradient of divorce have operationalized individuals’ socioeconomic status (SES) through education, often neglecting social class differences. Education may proxy cultural and cognitive skills, whereas social class could more accurately capture economic means. Additionally, existing research has predominantly focused on women and marital dissolutions. This study addresses these oversights by analyzing th…
Ethnic Wage Penalty and Human Capital Transferability: A Comparative Study of Recent Migrants in 11 European Countries
This article examines the ethnic wage penalty among migrants in 11 Western European countries. It aims to extend the literature on the models of migrant occupational inclusion in European labor markets by studying the wage gap and to disentangle whether the gross wage penalty experienced by foreign-born residents can be explained by human capital-related factors and/or by migrants’ occupational segregation. Estimating probit models with sample se…
Employment Protection Legislation, Labour Market Dualism, and Fertility in Europe
Theoretically, whether a more loosely regulated labour market inhibits or fosters fertility in a society is ambiguous. Empirically, the few studies analysing the relationship between the strictness of employment protection legislation—the norms and procedures regulating labour markets’ hiring and firing processes—and fertility have found mixed evidence. This paper reconciles the ambivalent conclusions of previous studies by analysing the impact o…
Fertility and Media Narratives of the Economy: Evidence From Italian News Coverage
We argue that media-conveyed economic narratives are crucial for understanding contemporary fertility dynamics, net of objective economic constraints. Individuals use these narratives to project themselves into an actionable imagined future and make decisions that may be relatively independent from their actual economic situation. We test this hypothesis for Italy by combining individual-level data from the 2009 and 2016 releases of the nationall…
Non-intact Families and Children’s Educational Outcomes: Comparing Native and Migrant Pupils
This study explores whether the association between living in a single-parent household and children’s educational outcomes differs by migration background through comparing natives with first- and second-generation migrant pupils from different areas of origin. While there is strong evidence of an educational gap between migrant and native pupils in Western countries—and particularly in Italy—the interaction with family structure has been under-…
Legal status and immigrants’ labour market outcomes: Comparative evidence from a quasi-experiment in Western and Southern Europe
Improved legal status has been found to be associated with better labour market outcomes for immigrants, although causal effects remain difficult to ascertain. This article contributes to the debate on the ‘citizenship/legal status premium' by providing quasi-experimental evidence based on the 2007 EU Eastern Enlargement, following which immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria, the new EU Member States, acquired the EU citizen status. The article al…
The ethnic wage penalty in Western European regions: Is the European integration model confirmed when differences within countries are considered
The European model of integration of recent immigrants is characterised by a trade-off between employment and job quality, which takes different forms in Southern and Continental Europe. In Mediterranean countries, migrants have similar employment opportun
Parental education, divorce, and children's educational attainment: Evidence from a comparative analysis
Children who experience parental divorce have worse long-term educational attainment than children living in intact families. Less clear is the extent to which heterogeneity in the divorce penalty depends on parentsâ socioeconomic background and contextual
Uncertainty and Narratives of the Future: A Theoretical Framework for Contemporary Fertility
Explanations for fertility decisions based on structural constraints—such as labor, housing condition, or income—do not account for the contemporary fertility downturn faced by many countries in Europe. In this paper, we posit that the rise of uncertainty is central for understanding contemporary fertility dynamics. We propose a theoretical framework (the Narrative Framework) for the study of fertility decisions under uncertain conditions based o…
Marriage and cohabitation under uncertainty: The role of narratives of the future during the Covid-19 pandemic
This paper addresses the impact of COVID-19-induced uncertainty on union formation intentions in Italy. We acknowledge that decisions made in uncertain conditions rely on personal narratives of the future, that is socially-constructed contingent plans for achieving a personal imaginary. The data come from an on-line survey experiment carried out during the final week of lockdown in Italy on a sample of 1,846 individuals in a romantic relationship…
A reflection on economic uncertainty and fertility in Europe: The Narrative Framework
The generalized and relatively homogeneous fertility decline across European countries in the aftermath of the Great Recession poses serious challenges to our knowledge of contemporary low fertility patterns. In this paper, we argue that fertility decisions are not a mere “statistical shadow of the past”, and advance the Narrative Framework, a new approach to the relationship between economic uncertainty and fertility. This framework proffers tha…
A “U-Shaped” Pattern of Immigrants’ Occupational Careers? A Comparative Analysis of Italy, Spain, and France
The international literature hypothesized a “U-shaped” pattern of immigrants’ occupational trajectories from origin to destination countries due to the imperfect transferability of human capital. However, empirical evidence supporting this hypothesis is available only in single-country studies and for “old,” Anglo-Saxon migration countries with deregulated labor markets. This article compares Italy, Spain, and France, providing evidence that the …
Part-time employment as a way to increase women’s employment: (Where) does it work
Part-time employment has repeatedly been proposed as a solution for integrating women into the labor market; however, empirical evidence supporting a causal link is mixed. In this text, we investigate the extent to which increasing part-time employment is a valid means of augmenting women’s labor market participation. We pay particular attention to the institutional context and the related characteristics of part-time employment in European count…
Family arrangements and children's educational outcomes: Heterogeneous penalties in upper-secondary school
This paper studies whether new family patterns fostered inequality of educational opportunities in upper-secondary education in Italy
Poor Returns to Origin-Country Education for Non-Western Immigrants in Italy: An Analysis of Occupational Status on Arrival and Mobility
Previous research on the Italian case has shown that non-Western immigrants are very likely to hold low-qualified jobs and that their occupational mobility chances are rather poor, which suggests low returns to education. In this paper, we investigate whether, and to what extent, immigrants’ different areas of origin moderate the returns to educational degrees obtained in the origin country. Data from a survey on the immigrant population (carried…
A “U-Shaped” Pattern of Immigrants’ Occupational Careers? A Comparative Analysis of Italy, Spain, and France
The international literature hypothesized a “U-shaped” pattern of immigrants’ occupational trajectories from origin to destination countries due to the imperfect transferability of human capital. However, empirical evidence supporting this hypothesis is available only in single-country studies and for “old,” Anglo-Saxon migration countries with deregulated labor markets. This article compares Italy, Spain, and France, providing evidence that the …
Religiosity, gender attitudes and women’s labour market participation and fertility decisions in Europe
The Second Demographic Transition (SDT) theory underlines the importance of changing values and attitudes to explain the trend toward low fertility and raising female labour market participation. We contribute to this debate comparing religiosity and gender attitudes over several European countries using three waves of the European Values Study (1990, 1999 and 2008). By dealing with the issues of measurement invariance and endogeneity between val…
Marriage and cohabitation under uncertainty: The role of narratives of the future during the Covid-19 pandemic
This paper addresses the impact of COVID-19-induced uncertainty on union formation intentions in Italy. We acknowledge that decisions made in uncertain conditions rely on personal narratives of the future, that is socially-constructed contingent plans for achieving a personal imaginary. The data come from an on-line survey experiment carried out during the final week of lockdown in Italy on a sample of 1,846 individuals in a romantic relationship…
An Empirical Study of Status Exchange through Migrant/Native Marriages in Italy
The growth of migrant/native marriages documented in many developed countries is often regarded as an indicator of immigrants’ assimilation into host societies. We argue that a close examination of assortative mating patterns in migrant/native marriages is critical for a proper assessment of the link between immigrants’ assimilation and intermarriage. Specifically, we test the relevance of the status exchange hypothesis to accounting for mixed ma…
Determinants of dietary compliance among Italian children: Disentangling the effect of social origins using Bourdieu's cultural capital theory
Making use of Bourdieu's threefold conceptualisation of cultural capital, this paper examines and disentangles the association between social origins and children's food consumption. The aim of the work is twofold. Using data from the Multipurpose survey on daily life conducted by Istat (2009-2012), we first show that children's compliance with dietary advice is indeed influenced by their social origins, but more so in terms of familial cultural …
Fixed-Term Contracts, Economic Conjuncture, and Training Opportunities: A Comparative Analysis Across European Labour Markets
Our work aims to bring together two research fields: the debate concerning different labour market flexibilization strategies and the determinants of training chances. The purpose of our work is therefore to assess the trade-off between temporary employment and training opportunities in a comparative analysis of three groups of countries characterized by different levels of labour market segmentation and training coverage. Particular attention is…
Part-time employment as a way to increase women’s employment: (Where) does it work
Part-time employment has repeatedly been proposed as a solution for integrating women into the labor market; however, empirical evidence supporting a causal link is mixed. In this text, we investigate the extent to which increasing part-time employment is a valid means of augmenting women’s labor market participation. We pay particular attention to the institutional context and the related characteristics of part-time employment in European count…
Ethnic Wage Penalty and Human Capital Transferability: A Comparative Study of Recent Migrants in 11 European Countries
This article examines the ethnic wage penalty among migrants in 11 Western European countries. It aims to extend the literature on the models of migrant occupational inclusion in European labor markets by studying the wage gap and to disentangle whether the gross wage penalty experienced by foreign-born residents can be explained by human capital-related factors and/or by migrants’ occupational segregation. Estimating probit models with sample se…
The Spreading of Cohabitation as a Diffusion Process: Evidence from Italy
Poor Returns to Origin-Country Education for Non-Western Immigrants in Italy: An Analysis of Occupational Status on Arrival and Mobility
Previous research on the Italian case has shown that non-Western immigrants are very likely to hold low-qualified jobs and that their occupational mobility chances are rather poor, which suggests low returns to education. In this paper, we investigate whether, and to what extent, immigrants’ different areas of origin moderate the returns to educational degrees obtained in the origin country. Data from a survey on the immigrant population (carried…
The impact of citizenship on intermarriage: Quasi-experimental evidence from two European Union Eastern enlargements
According to assimilation theory, the more immigrants are integrated within host countries the more likely they are to intermarry. However, status exchange theory argues instead that when integration is low, immigrants may use intermarriage as a means of i
Parental education, divorce, and children's educational attainment: Evidence from a comparative analysis
Children who experience parental divorce have worse long-term educational attainment than children living in intact families. Less clear is the extent to which heterogeneity in the divorce penalty depends on parentsâ socioeconomic background and contextual
Educational expansion without equalization: A reappraisal of the ‘Effectively Maintained Inequality’ hypothesis in children's choice of the upper secondary track
Previous studies of trends in social inequalities in upper secondary track choices in Italy found evidence that, in the period of highest educational expansion, horizontal inequalities increased, consistently with the Effectively Maintained Inequality thesis (EMI). Our paper, focusing on the youngest birth cohorts (1958–1989), documents that enrolments at upper secondary schools have become almost universal and have been followed by a huge expans…
Geographical Mobility and Reproductive Choices of Italian Men
In addition to women's increased educational attainment and institutional settings, also changed orientations toward family to achieve full life-satisfaction have been underlined to explain low fertility rates. Since Southern and Northern Italy differ for the institutional and economic setting, cultural orientations regarding the importance of family as well as fertility rates, also for Italy it seems reasonable to suppose that the latter are cau…
Family arrangements and children's educational outcomes: Heterogeneous penalties in upper-secondary school
This paper studies whether new family patterns fostered inequality of educational opportunities in upper-secondary education in Italy
Employment Returns to Tertiary Education for Immigrants in Western Europe: Cross-Country Differences Before and After the Economic Crisis
This article contributes to the literature on the models of immigrants’ labour market incorporation in Western Europe by analysing the employment returns to tertiary education for both natives and immigrants. By using yearly EU-LFS data (2005–2013) for a selection of Western European countries, cross-country differences in the employment returns to tertiary education are analysed separately by immigrant status and gender. In Continental Europe, w…
Can Family Policies Enhance Fertility? An Ex Ante Evaluation Through Factorial Survey Experiments
This article explores the family policies–fertility nexus by assessing the potential impact of parental leaves, childcare services, and child benefits on fertility through a factorial survey experiment (FSE). We focus on Italy, where persistently low fertility rates are often linked to limited welfare support for families. We surveyed 4,022 respondents aged 20–44 and exposed them to various scenarios characterized by different family policy packa…
Fertility and Media Narratives of the Economy: Evidence From Italian News Coverage
We argue that media-conveyed economic narratives are crucial for understanding contemporary fertility dynamics, net of objective economic constraints. Individuals use these narratives to project themselves into an actionable imagined future and make decisions that may be relatively independent from their actual economic situation. We test this hypothesis for Italy by combining individual-level data from the 2009 and 2016 releases of the nationall…
Legal status and immigrants’ labour market outcomes: Comparative evidence from a quasi-experiment in Western and Southern Europe
Improved legal status has been found to be associated with better labour market outcomes for immigrants, although causal effects remain difficult to ascertain. This article contributes to the debate on the ‘citizenship/legal status premium' by providing quasi-experimental evidence based on the 2007 EU Eastern Enlargement, following which immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria, the new EU Member States, acquired the EU citizen status. The article al…
Cultural capital and gender differences in health behaviours: A Study on Eating, Smoking and Drinking Patterns
It is widely acknowledged that people with higher socioeconomic positions and women smoke less, avoid alcohol abuse, and eat more healthily. Yet far less is known about the interaction of socioeconomic status with gender, especially in the Italian context. Here we address this issue by employing Abel’s adaptation of Bourdieu’s cultural capital theory and Courtenay’s theory of gender construction and health. Using 2012 data from the Multipurpose s…
The changing educational and social class gradients in union dissolution: Evidence from a latecomer of the Second Demographic Transition
Most studies on the changing socioeconomic gradient of divorce have operationalized individuals’ socioeconomic status (SES) through education, often neglecting social class differences. Education may proxy cultural and cognitive skills, whereas social class could more accurately capture economic means. Additionally, existing research has predominantly focused on women and marital dissolutions. This study addresses these oversights by analyzing th…
Employment Protection Legislation, Labour Market Dualism, and Fertility in Europe
Theoretically, whether a more loosely regulated labour market inhibits or fosters fertility in a society is ambiguous. Empirically, the few studies analysing the relationship between the strictness of employment protection legislation—the norms and procedures regulating labour markets’ hiring and firing processes—and fertility have found mixed evidence. This paper reconciles the ambivalent conclusions of previous studies by analysing the impact o…
Do Mixed Unions Foster Integration? The Educational Outcomes of Mixed-Parentage Children in Italy
Unstable employment careers and (quasi-)completed fertility: Evidence from the labour market deregulation in Italy
Most research on the fertility consequences of labour market instability has focussed on the transition to parenthood, ignoring potential 'catching up' effects and, thus, the more encompassing view on cohort fertility. This work extends on this point by analysing the consequences of employment instability on (quasi-)completed fertility for men and women in Italy. From a cohort perspective, we look at fertility outcomes at age 41 among those who e…
The ethnic wage penalty in Western European regions: Is the European integration model confirmed when differences within countries are considered
The European model of integration of recent immigrants is characterised by a trade-off between employment and job quality, which takes different forms in Southern and Continental Europe. In Mediterranean countries, migrants have similar employment opportun
Fixed-Term Contracts, Economic Conjuncture, and Training Opportunities: A Comparative Analysis Across European Labour Markets
Our work aims to bring together two research fields: the debate concerning different labour market flexibilization strategies and the determinants of training chances. The purpose of our work is therefore to assess the trade-off between temporary employment and training opportunities in a comparative analysis of three groups of countries characterized by different levels of labour market segmentation and training coverage. Particular attention is…
Geographical Mobility and Reproductive Choices of Italian Men
In addition to women's increased educational attainment and institutional settings, also changed orientations toward family to achieve full life-satisfaction have been underlined to explain low fertility rates. Since Southern and Northern Italy differ for the institutional and economic setting, cultural orientations regarding the importance of family as well as fertility rates, also for Italy it seems reasonable to suppose that the latter are cau…
Religiosity, gender attitudes and women’s labour market participation and fertility decisions in Europe
The Second Demographic Transition (SDT) theory underlines the importance of changing values and attitudes to explain the trend toward low fertility and raising female labour market participation. We contribute to this debate comparing religiosity and gender attitudes over several European countries using three waves of the European Values Study (1990, 1999 and 2008). By dealing with the issues of measurement invariance and endogeneity between val…
An Empirical Study of Status Exchange through Migrant/Native Marriages in Italy
The growth of migrant/native marriages documented in many developed countries is often regarded as an indicator of immigrants’ assimilation into host societies. We argue that a close examination of assortative mating patterns in migrant/native marriages is critical for a proper assessment of the link between immigrants’ assimilation and intermarriage. Specifically, we test the relevance of the status exchange hypothesis to accounting for mixed ma…
Educational expansion without equalization: A reappraisal of the ‘Effectively Maintained Inequality’ hypothesis in children's choice of the upper secondary track
Previous studies of trends in social inequalities in upper secondary track choices in Italy found evidence that, in the period of highest educational expansion, horizontal inequalities increased, consistently with the Effectively Maintained Inequality thesis (EMI). Our paper, focusing on the youngest birth cohorts (1958–1989), documents that enrolments at upper secondary schools have become almost universal and have been followed by a huge expans…
The Spreading of Cohabitation as a Diffusion Process: Evidence from Italy
The impact of citizenship on intermarriage: Quasi-experimental evidence from two European Union Eastern enlargements
According to assimilation theory, the more immigrants are integrated within host countries the more likely they are to intermarry. However, status exchange theory argues instead that when integration is low, immigrants may use intermarriage as a means of i
Determinants of dietary compliance among Italian children: Disentangling the effect of social origins using Bourdieu's cultural capital theory
Making use of Bourdieu's threefold conceptualisation of cultural capital, this paper examines and disentangles the association between social origins and children's food consumption. The aim of the work is twofold. Using data from the Multipurpose survey on daily life conducted by Istat (2009-2012), we first show that children's compliance with dietary advice is indeed influenced by their social origins, but more so in terms of familial cultural …
Do Mixed Unions Foster Integration? The Educational Outcomes of Mixed-Parentage Children in Italy
Poor Returns to Origin-Country Education for Non-Western Immigrants in Italy: An Analysis of Occupational Status on Arrival and Mobility
Previous research on the Italian case has shown that non-Western immigrants are very likely to hold low-qualified jobs and that their occupational mobility chances are rather poor, which suggests low returns to education. In this paper, we investigate whether, and to what extent, immigrants’ different areas of origin moderate the returns to educational degrees obtained in the origin country. Data from a survey on the immigrant population (carried…
Employment Returns to Tertiary Education for Immigrants in Western Europe: Cross-Country Differences Before and After the Economic Crisis
This article contributes to the literature on the models of immigrants’ labour market incorporation in Western Europe by analysing the employment returns to tertiary education for both natives and immigrants. By using yearly EU-LFS data (2005–2013) for a selection of Western European countries, cross-country differences in the employment returns to tertiary education are analysed separately by immigrant status and gender. In Continental Europe, w…
Cultural capital and gender differences in health behaviours: A Study on Eating, Smoking and Drinking Patterns
It is widely acknowledged that people with higher socioeconomic positions and women smoke less, avoid alcohol abuse, and eat more healthily. Yet far less is known about the interaction of socioeconomic status with gender, especially in the Italian context. Here we address this issue by employing Abel’s adaptation of Bourdieu’s cultural capital theory and Courtenay’s theory of gender construction and health. Using 2012 data from the Multipurpose s…
A “U-Shaped” Pattern of Immigrants’ Occupational Careers? A Comparative Analysis of Italy, Spain, and France
The international literature hypothesized a “U-shaped” pattern of immigrants’ occupational trajectories from origin to destination countries due to the imperfect transferability of human capital. However, empirical evidence supporting this hypothesis is available only in single-country studies and for “old,” Anglo-Saxon migration countries with deregulated labor markets. This article compares Italy, Spain, and France, providing evidence that the …
Part-time employment as a way to increase women’s employment: (Where) does it work
Part-time employment has repeatedly been proposed as a solution for integrating women into the labor market; however, empirical evidence supporting a causal link is mixed. In this text, we investigate the extent to which increasing part-time employment is a valid means of augmenting women’s labor market participation. We pay particular attention to the institutional context and the related characteristics of part-time employment in European count…
Family arrangements and children's educational outcomes: Heterogeneous penalties in upper-secondary school
This paper studies whether new family patterns fostered inequality of educational opportunities in upper-secondary education in Italy
Uncertainty and Narratives of the Future: A Theoretical Framework for Contemporary Fertility
Explanations for fertility decisions based on structural constraints—such as labor, housing condition, or income—do not account for the contemporary fertility downturn faced by many countries in Europe. In this paper, we posit that the rise of uncertainty is central for understanding contemporary fertility dynamics. We propose a theoretical framework (the Narrative Framework) for the study of fertility decisions under uncertain conditions based o…
Marriage and cohabitation under uncertainty: The role of narratives of the future during the Covid-19 pandemic
This paper addresses the impact of COVID-19-induced uncertainty on union formation intentions in Italy. We acknowledge that decisions made in uncertain conditions rely on personal narratives of the future, that is socially-constructed contingent plans for achieving a personal imaginary. The data come from an on-line survey experiment carried out during the final week of lockdown in Italy on a sample of 1,846 individuals in a romantic relationship…
A reflection on economic uncertainty and fertility in Europe: The Narrative Framework
The generalized and relatively homogeneous fertility decline across European countries in the aftermath of the Great Recession poses serious challenges to our knowledge of contemporary low fertility patterns. In this paper, we argue that fertility decisions are not a mere “statistical shadow of the past”, and advance the Narrative Framework, a new approach to the relationship between economic uncertainty and fertility. This framework proffers tha…
Non-intact Families and Children’s Educational Outcomes: Comparing Native and Migrant Pupils
This study explores whether the association between living in a single-parent household and children’s educational outcomes differs by migration background through comparing natives with first- and second-generation migrant pupils from different areas of origin. While there is strong evidence of an educational gap between migrant and native pupils in Western countries—and particularly in Italy—the interaction with family structure has been under-…
Legal status and immigrants’ labour market outcomes: Comparative evidence from a quasi-experiment in Western and Southern Europe
Improved legal status has been found to be associated with better labour market outcomes for immigrants, although causal effects remain difficult to ascertain. This article contributes to the debate on the ‘citizenship/legal status premium' by providing quasi-experimental evidence based on the 2007 EU Eastern Enlargement, following which immigrants from Romania and Bulgaria, the new EU Member States, acquired the EU citizen status. The article al…
The ethnic wage penalty in Western European regions: Is the European integration model confirmed when differences within countries are considered
The European model of integration of recent immigrants is characterised by a trade-off between employment and job quality, which takes different forms in Southern and Continental Europe. In Mediterranean countries, migrants have similar employment opportun
Parental education, divorce, and children's educational attainment: Evidence from a comparative analysis
Children who experience parental divorce have worse long-term educational attainment than children living in intact families. Less clear is the extent to which heterogeneity in the divorce penalty depends on parentsâ socioeconomic background and contextual
Ethnic Wage Penalty and Human Capital Transferability: A Comparative Study of Recent Migrants in 11 European Countries
This article examines the ethnic wage penalty among migrants in 11 Western European countries. It aims to extend the literature on the models of migrant occupational inclusion in European labor markets by studying the wage gap and to disentangle whether the gross wage penalty experienced by foreign-born residents can be explained by human capital-related factors and/or by migrants’ occupational segregation. Estimating probit models with sample se…
Employment Protection Legislation, Labour Market Dualism, and Fertility in Europe
Theoretically, whether a more loosely regulated labour market inhibits or fosters fertility in a society is ambiguous. Empirically, the few studies analysing the relationship between the strictness of employment protection legislation—the norms and procedures regulating labour markets’ hiring and firing processes—and fertility have found mixed evidence. This paper reconciles the ambivalent conclusions of previous studies by analysing the impact o…
Fertility and Media Narratives of the Economy: Evidence From Italian News Coverage
We argue that media-conveyed economic narratives are crucial for understanding contemporary fertility dynamics, net of objective economic constraints. Individuals use these narratives to project themselves into an actionable imagined future and make decisions that may be relatively independent from their actual economic situation. We test this hypothesis for Italy by combining individual-level data from the 2009 and 2016 releases of the nationall…
Economics (24 works) · Demographic economics (21 works) · Sociology (21 works) · Family Dynamics and Relationships (19 works) · Political science (19 works) · Demography (14 works) · Intergenerational Family Dynamics and Caregiving (13 works) · Population (13 works) · Fertility (10 works) · Geography (10 works)