Scherer
Biographic Data
| ID | 8990 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Scherer |
| FAMILY NAME | Scherer |
| SIGNATURE | SCHERER |
| AFFILIATIONS | University of Trento |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-1848-1231 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 35 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 551 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 35 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2001 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2026 |
| H-INDEX | 12 |
Formal Childcare Provision and Birth Trends: Evidence from Italy
Using a counterfactual framework based on municipal data, we examine the effect of variations in the provision of Early Childhood Education and Care (ECEC) services for children below three years of age on births in Italy. We find that an increase in the availability of ECEC services has a positive and statistically significant effect on the number of births at the municipal level. However, these significant effects on births require two conditio…
Family Complexity and Later-Life Wealth: A Comparative Perspective Across European Countries
This paper investigates how the complexity of individual family trajectories relates to personal net wealth in later life, in comparative perspective. Using retrospective and prospective SHARE data (waves 1–7, 2004–2017), we analyse cohorts born between the 1930s and 1960s across ten European countries, grouped into Scandinavian, Continental, and Southern clusters. We derive a measure of family complexity from sequence analysis and estimate gener…
Economic insecurity and material deprivation: Coping strategies among couple families with and without small children in Europe
BACKGROUND: Families in Europe are increasingly exposed to economic insecurity, which may heighten their risk of material deprivation. Coping strategies – typically involving employment by family members – may help mitigate such risks. However, the ability to adopt such strategies and their effectiveness may depend on the welfare context and the presence of small children, an aspect that remains under-investigated. OBJECTIVE: This paper examines …
The Elephant in the Family Policy Room: How Care Culture Influences the Effects of Public Childcare on Women’s Labor Market Participation in Europe
This paper examines how cultural contexts influence the extent to which policies aimed at supporting women’s employment and gender equality achieve their objectives. More specifically, it addresses how the availability of formal public childcare services for children under the age of three and their expansion support women’s labour market participation in different cultural contexts. Few studies have examined cultural and structural factors toget…
Citizenship Acquisition and Labour Market Outcomes Among Immigrants in Italy: Evidence From Linked Survey‐Register Data
The literature shows that immigrants who acquire citizenship tend to achieve better labour market outcomes than those who do not, though this may reflect positive selection rather than a causal effect. This study is the first to examine the consequences of citizenship acquisition for immigrants in Italy, a country with rising naturalisation rates and persistent ethnic penalties. Using nationally representative survey and register data for 2016, w…
Routes to healthy ageing: The Role of Lifecourse Patterns
Healthy ageing is a dynamic process, but only a few studies use a longitudinal perspective to investigate the routes to healthy ageing and rarely do so in comparative perspective. This study adopts a holistic multi-domain approach in order to investigate the importance of lifecourse patterns for healthy ageing in Europe, as measured by the Global Activity Limitation Indicator (GALI) and using seven waves of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retire…
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…
In-work poverty in Western Europe. A longitudinal perspective
This study investigates levels and determinants of in-work poverty (IWP) in Western Europe using EU-SILC longitudinal data 2004–2019. We compared IWP risk and their dynamics across fourteen countries by examining individual labor market positions, household total labor supplies, and employment patterns. We further explored the social class gradient in exposure to IWP, as well as drivers and patterns of longitudinal accumulation of poverty. Relyin…
Gender and Beyond: Employment Patterns during the Covid-19 Pandemic in Italy
This paper investigates employment changes during the COVID-19 pandemic for women and men in a country characterized by notoriously low female employment: Italy. The paper explores to what extent previously existing inequalities in employment were further exacerbated during the pandemic. Using data from the Italian Labor Force Surveys from 2018 to 2020, we find evidence of a limited decline in employment, but a steep increase in the number of ind…
Trends in Women's Educational Advantage and Divorce in East and West Germany
Couples in which wives have more education than their husbands have been found to be more likely than other couples to divorce. But this relationship varies across time and place. We compare the relationship between spouses' relative education and marital dissolution across four birth cohorts born between 1951 and 1990 in East and West Germany using 37 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel (1984-2021) and Cox proportional hazard models. The co…
Populist Attitudes, Subjective Social Status, and Resentment in Italy
Social identity is relevant to political attitudes. Recent studies show that perceived social positions particularly shape populist attitudes. Italy is an interesting test case that has been scarcely investigated by previous research. Thus, using original data collected in 2021, this paper analyses populist attitudes in Italy and the relationship between subjective social status, status mismatch, and social resentment. This study finds that subje…
Equalizing or not? Public childcare and women’s labour market participation
Within the scientific literature and debate on social investment, public childcare provision plays a pivotal role. At the same time, critics have argued that social investment is often unable to reduce social inequalities and, to the contrary, tends to reproduce them (the so-called ‘Matthew effect’). The article focuses on a specific facet of social investment policies: their capacity to support mothers’ employment and its effect on social inequa…
Employment Instability and Childbirth over the Last 20 Years in Italy
Family formation is fostered by circumstances of plannability and economic and social stability. Conversely, as documented in previous literature, employment instability can hamper fertility decisions. Based on data from the Italian Labour Force Survey, this paper examines the association between employment-related instability and the likelihood of having a first or additional child from 2000 to 2020 in Italy, covering a period characterised by i…
Stratification of poverty risk: The importance of social class in four European countries
Find the right one. Educational assortative mating and educational reproduction in Germany
Mating Market and Dynamics of Union Formation
The paper investigates the relationship between structural partner market constraints and the timing and educational sorting of unions in Germany (1985–2018). We integrate the literature on the effect of the reversed gender gap in education on educational assortative mating, with a focus on mating dynamics and the measurement of the partner market over the life course. We concentrate on two particular educational groups, low-educated men and high…
Retraditionalisation? Work patterns of families with children during the pandemic in Italy
During the COVID-19 pandemic, employment declined and real incomes fell worldwide. The burden of childcare on families increased and, in many countries, womenâ s employment fell more than menâ s. From a couple-level perspective, changing employment patterns
Gender Wage Gap and the Involvement of Partners in Household Work
Women still earn less than men and continue to perform the bulk of domestic activities. Several studies documented a negative individual wage-housework relation, suggesting that gender discrepancies in housework may explain the gender wage gap. Less attention has been paid to the role of the partner's unpaid work and to the extent that intra-household inequalities relate to inequalities outside the house. The present study attempts to fill this g…
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…
Substitution, entrapment, and inefficiency? Cohort inequalities in a two-tier labour market
In this article, we provide a longitudinal account of institutionally originated, cohort inequalities in a two-tier labour market, taking Italy as an exemplary case of partial and targeted deregulation. We examine the incidence and career consequences of temporary employment relying on panel data, across reforms implemented in the 1990s and early 2000s. A substitution effect is found for the initial stages of workers' careers: while the youngest …
The buffering role of the family in the relationship between job loss and self-perceived health: Longitudinal results from Europe, 2004–2011
Maternal Employment: Enabling Factors in Context
Maternal employment is still below the overall EU recommended level of 60% in many European countries. Understanding the individual, household and contextual circumstances under which mothers of children of different ages are likely to be employed is crucial to develop strategies capable of increasing maternal employment. This article takes a comparative approach to investigating the characteristics associated with maternal employment in the pres…
Changing Work–Family Equilibria and Social Inequality
Profound changes in families and in employment patterns challenge the conventional view of work and family as two separate spheres, and finding a balance between them has become vitally important in economic, social, and even demographic terms for today's societies. Current trends also potentially alter families' role in societies' stratification system and overall inequality. Only recently research started to systematically link demographic and …
Does gender equality increase economic inequality? Evidence from five countries
The Spreading of Cohabitation as a Diffusion Process: Evidence from Italy
Stepping-Stones or Traps: The Consequences of Labour Market Entry Positions on Future Careers in West Germany, Great Britain and Italy
This article addresses the question of whether the first job functions as a 'stepping stone' or as a 'trap'. It does so by using individual longitudinal data to estimate the consequences on future occupational attainment of entry into the labour market via (a) 'under-qualified' jobs or (b) via temporary contracts. A cross-national comparison of West Germany, Great Britain and Italy allows assessment of the impact of different labour market struct…
Labour Market Flexibilization and its Consequences in Italy
Labor market ‘flexibilization’ or ‘deregulation’ is seen by many as a requirement for economic and occupational growth. As one route towards more flexibility, many European countries increased the so-called atypical or non-standard forms of employment while leaving the regulation of existing employment relations largely unchanged. In Italy, this led to a strong segmentation of the labour market. As employment is the only connection to a series of…
The Social Consequences of Insecure Jobs
Early Career Patterns: A Comparison of Great Britain and West Germany
The transition from initial education to work has received a great amount of attention, but hardly any research treats this process holistically. This paper focuses on the serial succession of statuses instead of on single events in the early years after leaving full-time education. As methodological tool Sequence Analysis will be applied. Optimal matching procedures allow for the direct comparison of entire career sequences taking into account t…
Patterns of Labour Market Entry - Long Wait or Career Instability? An Empirical Comparison of Italy, Great Britain and West Germany
Current discussion in Europe focuses closely on (partial) labour market de-regulation as a means to combat constantly high (youth) unemployment. The paper argues that this perspective is too narrow and fails to account for existing national institutional differences. It suggests that the focus should instead be on a combination of different institutional settings, rather than on single aspects. This general issue is approached by investigating th…
Maternal Employment: Enabling Factors in Context
Maternal employment is still below the overall EU recommended level of 60% in many European countries. Understanding the individual, household and contextual circumstances under which mothers of children of different ages are likely to be employed is crucial to develop strategies capable of increasing maternal employment. This article takes a comparative approach to investigating the characteristics associated with maternal employment in the pres…
The Rise of a Latin Model? Family and fertility consequences of employment instability in Italy and Spain
This paper analyses how unstable employment influences becoming a mother in Italy and Spain. Results suggest that institutional factors foster dynamics of social inequality and hinder family formation. We show that in southern Europe (Italy and Spain), but not in other institutional contexts, the lack of employment stability produces a delay in fertility decision. We attribute this impact of the employment situation on demographic decisions to th…
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…
Accumulation of Employment Instability Among Partners-Evidence from Six EU Countries
Growing employment insecurity has stimulated much research in social science, most of which describes the characteristics of insecure employment and investigates the career consequences for individuals. However, the consequences of insecure employment are moderated by the household context. Relatively little is known about the accumulation or compensation of insecure labour situation on the household level. We investigate if the household/family …
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…
Does gender equality increase economic inequality? Evidence from five countries
Gender Wage Gap and the Involvement of Partners in Household Work
Women still earn less than men and continue to perform the bulk of domestic activities. Several studies documented a negative individual wage-housework relation, suggesting that gender discrepancies in housework may explain the gender wage gap. Less attention has been paid to the role of the partner's unpaid work and to the extent that intra-household inequalities relate to inequalities outside the house. The present study attempts to fill this g…
Substitution, entrapment, and inefficiency? Cohort inequalities in a two-tier labour market
In this article, we provide a longitudinal account of institutionally originated, cohort inequalities in a two-tier labour market, taking Italy as an exemplary case of partial and targeted deregulation. We examine the incidence and career consequences of temporary employment relying on panel data, across reforms implemented in the 1990s and early 2000s. A substitution effect is found for the initial stages of workers' careers: while the youngest …
The Spreading of Cohabitation as a Diffusion Process: Evidence from Italy
Equalizing or not? Public childcare and women’s labour market participation
Within the scientific literature and debate on social investment, public childcare provision plays a pivotal role. At the same time, critics have argued that social investment is often unable to reduce social inequalities and, to the contrary, tends to reproduce them (the so-called ‘Matthew effect’). The article focuses on a specific facet of social investment policies: their capacity to support mothers’ employment and its effect on social inequa…
Employment Instability and Childbirth over the Last 20 Years in Italy
Family formation is fostered by circumstances of plannability and economic and social stability. Conversely, as documented in previous literature, employment instability can hamper fertility decisions. Based on data from the Italian Labour Force Survey, this paper examines the association between employment-related instability and the likelihood of having a first or additional child from 2000 to 2020 in Italy, covering a period characterised by i…
Mating Market and Dynamics of Union Formation
The paper investigates the relationship between structural partner market constraints and the timing and educational sorting of unions in Germany (1985–2018). We integrate the literature on the effect of the reversed gender gap in education on educational assortative mating, with a focus on mating dynamics and the measurement of the partner market over the life course. We concentrate on two particular educational groups, low-educated men and high…
Populist Attitudes, Subjective Social Status, and Resentment in Italy
Social identity is relevant to political attitudes. Recent studies show that perceived social positions particularly shape populist attitudes. Italy is an interesting test case that has been scarcely investigated by previous research. Thus, using original data collected in 2021, this paper analyses populist attitudes in Italy and the relationship between subjective social status, status mismatch, and social resentment. This study finds that subje…
Retraditionalisation? Work patterns of families with children during the pandemic in Italy
During the COVID-19 pandemic, employment declined and real incomes fell worldwide. The burden of childcare on families increased and, in many countries, womenâ s employment fell more than menâ s. From a couple-level perspective, changing employment patterns
Find the right one. Educational assortative mating and educational reproduction in Germany
In-work poverty in Western Europe. A longitudinal perspective
This study investigates levels and determinants of in-work poverty (IWP) in Western Europe using EU-SILC longitudinal data 2004–2019. We compared IWP risk and their dynamics across fourteen countries by examining individual labor market positions, household total labor supplies, and employment patterns. We further explored the social class gradient in exposure to IWP, as well as drivers and patterns of longitudinal accumulation of poverty. Relyin…
The buffering role of the family in the relationship between job loss and self-perceived health: Longitudinal results from Europe, 2004–2011
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…
Trends in Women's Educational Advantage and Divorce in East and West Germany
Couples in which wives have more education than their husbands have been found to be more likely than other couples to divorce. But this relationship varies across time and place. We compare the relationship between spouses' relative education and marital dissolution across four birth cohorts born between 1951 and 1990 in East and West Germany using 37 waves of the German Socio-Economic Panel (1984-2021) and Cox proportional hazard models. The co…
Stratification of poverty risk: The importance of social class in four European countries
Early Career Patterns: A Comparison of Great Britain and West Germany
The transition from initial education to work has received a great amount of attention, but hardly any research treats this process holistically. This paper focuses on the serial succession of statuses instead of on single events in the early years after leaving full-time education. As methodological tool Sequence Analysis will be applied. Optimal matching procedures allow for the direct comparison of entire career sequences taking into account t…
The Casmin Educational Classification in International Comparative Research
Stepping-Stones or Traps: The Consequences of Labour Market Entry Positions on Future Careers in West Germany, Great Britain and Italy
This article addresses the question of whether the first job functions as a 'stepping stone' or as a 'trap'. It does so by using individual longitudinal data to estimate the consequences on future occupational attainment of entry into the labour market via (a) 'under-qualified' jobs or (b) via temporary contracts. A cross-national comparison of West Germany, Great Britain and Italy allows assessment of the impact of different labour market struct…
Patterns of Labour Market Entry - Long Wait or Career Instability? An Empirical Comparison of Italy, Great Britain and West Germany
Current discussion in Europe focuses closely on (partial) labour market de-regulation as a means to combat constantly high (youth) unemployment. The paper argues that this perspective is too narrow and fails to account for existing national institutional differences. It suggests that the focus should instead be on a combination of different institutional settings, rather than on single aspects. This general issue is approached by investigating th…
Work and Family in Conflict? The Impact of Work Demands on Family Life
This chapter examines difficulties of reconciling work and family demands in six European countries; looks at divergences in experiences among different sectors of the workforce, different family types, and household employment patterns; and gauges the extent to which such experiences are mediated by different institutional structures. It considers the extent to which successful conciliation between paid work and family life may be facilitated by…
Labour Market Flexibilization and its Consequences in Italy
Labor market ‘flexibilization’ or ‘deregulation’ is seen by many as a requirement for economic and occupational growth. As one route towards more flexibility, many European countries increased the so-called atypical or non-standard forms of employment while leaving the regulation of existing employment relations largely unchanged. In Italy, this led to a strong segmentation of the labour market. As employment is the only connection to a series of…
The Social Consequences of Insecure Jobs
Accumulation of Employment Instability Among Partners-Evidence from Six EU Countries
Growing employment insecurity has stimulated much research in social science, most of which describes the characteristics of insecure employment and investigates the career consequences for individuals. However, the consequences of insecure employment are moderated by the household context. Relatively little is known about the accumulation or compensation of insecure labour situation on the household level. We investigate if the household/family …
The Rise of a Latin Model? Family and fertility consequences of employment instability in Italy and Spain
This paper analyses how unstable employment influences becoming a mother in Italy and Spain. Results suggest that institutional factors foster dynamics of social inequality and hinder family formation. We show that in southern Europe (Italy and Spain), but not in other institutional contexts, the lack of employment stability produces a delay in fertility decision. We attribute this impact of the employment situation on demographic decisions to th…
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…
Changing Work–Family Equilibria and Social Inequality
Profound changes in families and in employment patterns challenge the conventional view of work and family as two separate spheres, and finding a balance between them has become vitally important in economic, social, and even demographic terms for today's societies. Current trends also potentially alter families' role in societies' stratification system and overall inequality. Only recently research started to systematically link demographic and …
Does gender equality increase economic inequality? Evidence from five countries
The Spreading of Cohabitation as a Diffusion Process: Evidence from Italy
The buffering role of the family in the relationship between job loss and self-perceived health: Longitudinal results from Europe, 2004–2011
Maternal Employment: Enabling Factors in Context
Maternal employment is still below the overall EU recommended level of 60% in many European countries. Understanding the individual, household and contextual circumstances under which mothers of children of different ages are likely to be employed is crucial to develop strategies capable of increasing maternal employment. This article takes a comparative approach to investigating the characteristics associated with maternal employment in the pres…
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…
Substitution, entrapment, and inefficiency? Cohort inequalities in a two-tier labour market
In this article, we provide a longitudinal account of institutionally originated, cohort inequalities in a two-tier labour market, taking Italy as an exemplary case of partial and targeted deregulation. We examine the incidence and career consequences of temporary employment relying on panel data, across reforms implemented in the 1990s and early 2000s. A substitution effect is found for the initial stages of workers' careers: while the youngest …
Mating Market and Dynamics of Union Formation
The paper investigates the relationship between structural partner market constraints and the timing and educational sorting of unions in Germany (1985–2018). We integrate the literature on the effect of the reversed gender gap in education on educational assortative mating, with a focus on mating dynamics and the measurement of the partner market over the life course. We concentrate on two particular educational groups, low-educated men and high…
Retraditionalisation? Work patterns of families with children during the pandemic in Italy
During the COVID-19 pandemic, employment declined and real incomes fell worldwide. The burden of childcare on families increased and, in many countries, womenâ s employment fell more than menâ s. From a couple-level perspective, changing employment patterns
Gender Wage Gap and the Involvement of Partners in Household Work
Women still earn less than men and continue to perform the bulk of domestic activities. Several studies documented a negative individual wage-housework relation, suggesting that gender discrepancies in housework may explain the gender wage gap. Less attention has been paid to the role of the partner's unpaid work and to the extent that intra-household inequalities relate to inequalities outside the house. The present study attempts to fill this g…
Find the right one. Educational assortative mating and educational reproduction in Germany
Equalizing or not? Public childcare and women’s labour market participation
Within the scientific literature and debate on social investment, public childcare provision plays a pivotal role. At the same time, critics have argued that social investment is often unable to reduce social inequalities and, to the contrary, tends to reproduce them (the so-called ‘Matthew effect’). The article focuses on a specific facet of social investment policies: their capacity to support mothers’ employment and its effect on social inequa…
Employment Instability and Childbirth over the Last 20 Years in Italy
Family formation is fostered by circumstances of plannability and economic and social stability. Conversely, as documented in previous literature, employment instability can hamper fertility decisions. Based on data from the Italian Labour Force Survey, this paper examines the association between employment-related instability and the likelihood of having a first or additional child from 2000 to 2020 in Italy, covering a period characterised by i…
Stratification of poverty risk: The importance of social class in four European countries
In-work poverty in Western Europe. A longitudinal perspective
This study investigates levels and determinants of in-work poverty (IWP) in Western Europe using EU-SILC longitudinal data 2004–2019. We compared IWP risk and their dynamics across fourteen countries by examining individual labor market positions, household total labor supplies, and employment patterns. We further explored the social class gradient in exposure to IWP, as well as drivers and patterns of longitudinal accumulation of poverty. Relyin…
Economics (24 works) · Demographic economics (22 works) · Sociology (17 works) · Employment and Welfare Studies (16 works) · Labour economics (15 works) · Political science (15 works) · Gender, Labor, and Family Dynamics (13 works) · Social Policy and Reform Studies (12 works) · Work-Family Balance Challenges (11 works) · Demography (9 works)