Alessandra Samoggia

The Longevity Pattern in Emilia Romagna, Italy: A Spatio-temporal Analysis

In this chapter, we investigate the pattern of longevity in an Italian region at a municipality level in two different periods. Spatio-temporal modeling is used to tackle at both periods the random variations in the occurrence of long-lived individuals, due to the rareness of such events in small areas. This method allows to exploit the spatial proximity smoothing the observed data, as well as to control for the effects of a set of regressors. As a result, clusters of areas characterized by extreme indexes of longevity are well identified and the temporal evolution of the phenomenon can be depicted. A joint analysis of male and female longevity by cohort in the two periods is conducted specifying a set of hierarchical Bayesian models.

Value-Orientations and Partnership

The aim of the paper is to analyze, for both men and women, the role played by value orientation and social condition in the choice of the various forms of partnership (marriage and cohabitation) in some European countries that represent the varying diffusion of cohabitation and are characterized by different ideational dimensions. The data analyzed using classification trees were obtained from the European Fertility and Family Surveys; the trees, identified separately for men and women in each country, were compared using a modified version of a recently proposed proximity measure, aimed at evaluating whether decisional processes differ between genders and whether they are specific to the nations examined.