Daria Mendola

The Importance of Consecutive Spells of Poverty: A Path‐Dependent Index of Longitudinal Poverty

In this paper we propose a new index of individual poverty in the longitudinal perspective, taking into account the way poverty and non�?poverty spells follow one another along individual life courses. The Poverty Persistence Index (PPI) is based on all the pairwise distances between the waves of poverty. The PPI is normalized and it assigns a higher degree of (longitudinal) poverty to people who experience poverty in consecutive, rather than separated, periods, for whom the distances from the poverty line are larger along time and moreover, when the worst years are consecutive and/or recent. We also propose an aggregate index of persistence in poverty (APPI) in order to measure the distribution of the persistence of poverty in a society, and evaluate at once the diffusion of poverty, its depth, duration, and recentness. The indices are tested in comparison with other measures from the literature both at the individual as well as at the societal level.

What is Your Couple Type? Gender Ideology, Housework Sharing and Babies

BACKGROUND It is increasingly acknowledged that not only gender equality, but also gender ideology plays a role in explaining fertility in advanced societies. In a micro perspective, the potential mismatch between gender equality (i.e. the actual sharing taking place in a couple) and gender ideology (i.e. gender equality in attitudes, as proxy for gender equity), may drive childbearing decisions. OBJECTIVE This paper assesses the impact of consistency between gender equality in attitudes and equality in the division of household labour on the likelihood of having another child, for different parities. METHODS Relying on two-wave panel data of the Bulgarian, French, Czech, Hungarian and Lithuanian Generations and Gender Surveys, we build a couple typology defined over gender attitudes and housework sharing.The typology identifies four types of couples: 1) gender unequal attitudes and gender unequal housework sharing; 2) gender equal attitudes and gender unequal housework sharing; 3) gender unequal attitudes and gender equal housework sharing; 4) gender equal attitudes and gender equal housework sharing. The couple types enter into a logistic regression model on childbirth. RESULTS The impact of the typology varies with parity and gender: taking as reference category the case of gender equal attitudes and gender equal division of housework, the effect of all the other couple types on a new childbirth is strong and negative for the second child and female respondents. CONCLUSIONS The consistency between gender equality in attitudes and the actual equality in housework sharing is only favourable for childbearing as long as there is gender equality in both the dimensions.

Chronic Poverty in European Mediterranean Countries

This chapter investigates the characteristics of chronic poverty among youth in Southern European countries. These countries have the highest levels of poverty in Europe and welfare systems unable to smooth social inequalities effectively. The main aim of this chapter is to investigate on how long-lasting poor among the Mediterranean youth differs in socio-demographic and economic characteristics. The intensity of poverty over time is measured by a very recent longitudinal poverty index based on the rationale of cumulative hardship. We tested the effects of many covariates on the incidence and intensity of chronic poverty, controlling for main socio-demographic and economic characteristics, using a ZINB model. The peculiar mix between the lack of effective state institutions and a strong presence of families explains why many factors, which usually are significantly related to poverty, do not have an important role here. A strong inertial effect is due to the intensity of poverty at the start of the time-window. Italian youth has the worst performance.

The Analysis of Poverty in Italy: A Fuzzy Dynamic Approach

The commonly used criterion to sharply separate the poor from the non poor on the basis of a poverty threshold appears to be too severe in comparison with the nature of poverty. The latter is multidimensional in its components (domain) and continue in its states (codomain). Moreover an income-based poverty line allows for a remarkable number of spurious transitions below and over that line, which do not correspond to true variations in household’s standard of living. This study starts from the analysis of common (with crisp states) transition matrices; then a fuzzy multidimensional poverty indicator is built. In conclusion, fuzzy states transition matrices synthesize interpretative content of previously proposed instruments for the analysis of poverty.

Women as Main Earners in Europe

This paper conducts a cross-sectional empirical research aimed at documenting that couples with women as main earners represent a non-negligible share of the European populations today. We identify the socio-demographic characteristics of couples with women as main earners in comparison to couples with men as main earners and couples with equal-earners. We undertake a comparative and cross-temporal approach using micro-level survey data for 18 European countries from the European Social Survey and two years, 2004 and 2010, covering the period before and during the economic crisis.

Assessing the Beneficial Effects of Economic Growth: The Harmonic Growth Index

In this paper we introduce the multidimensional notion of harmonic growth as a situation of diffused well-being associated to an increase of per capita GDP. We say that a country experienced a harmonic growth if during the observed period all the key indicators, proxies of the endogenous and exogenous forces driving population well-being, show a significantly common pattern with the income dynamics. The notion is operationalized via an index of time series harmony which follows the functional data analysis approach. This Harmonic Growth Index (HGI) is based on comparisons between the coefficients from cubic B-splines interpolation. Such indices are then synthesized in order to provide the global degree of harmony in growth inside a country. With an accurate selection of the key indicators, the index can be used also to rank countries thus offering a useful complementary information to the Human Development Indexes from UNDP. An exemplification is given for the Indian economy.

Imputation Strategies for Missing Data in Environmental Time Series for an Unlucky Situation

After a detailed review of the main specific solutions for treatment of missing data in environmental time series, this paper deals with the unlucky situation in which, in an hourly series, missing data immediately follow an absolutely anomalous period, for which we do not have any similar period to use for imputation. A tentative multivariate and multiple imputation is put forward and evaluated; it is based on the possibility, typical of environmental time series, to resort to correlations or physical laws that characterize relationships between air pollutants.

Methodological Issues in the Baffling Relationship Between Hepatitis C Virus and Non Hodgkin’s Lymphomas

The association between Hepatitis C Virus infection and B-cell Non-Hodgkin’s Lymphoma has been the matter of several studies: they showed disagreeing results with a marked regional variability. In this paper we present a review of the literature, highlighting methodological issues and main statistically critical aspects. Review suggests that studies were often not methodologically well approached. Moreover, we present main results from an original case-control study conducted in Italy, in an area of high endemicity of Hepatitis C Virus infection. In particular, we put attention in selection of a properly matching control group and in the role of age as a confounding variable.