Enrico Ivaldi

Material versus social deprivation and health: a case study of an urban area.

Socioeconomic factors are one of the main determinants of health inequalities. However, which component of socioeconomic status affects health most and how that relationship should be measured remains an open question. The aim of this study was to compare material and social deprivation indexes in order to determine which better explains health inequalities within an urban area. Following a review of the literature on small area deprivation indexes, a case study of the Italian city Genoa is presented. The city of Genoa is split into 71 small areas [urbanistic units (UU)], each of which has about 9,500 inhabitants. For each small area, socioeconomic indicators were extracted from the 2001 Census, whereas health indicators were computed from the death registry for 2001–2003. Factorial analyses was used to choose the deprivation variables, which were utilised to create two distinct deprivation indexes referring to material and social deprivation, respectively. Both deprivation indexes are positively correlated with health status proxied by standardised mortality ratios (SMRs) under 65. The material index, however, correlates more highly with SMRs than the social index, and thus the material index is the more suitable measure to explain variations in premature mortality within an urban area. Moreover, the two indexes must be kept distinct.

Shipbuilding in Italy at the End of the Crisis: Is There a Road to Recovery?

Until the year 2008, the segment of boating enjoyed an excellent state of health (AMI-Censis. La sfida della nautica: porti, servizi, tecnologie. Terza indagine sul turismo nautico in Italia, 2008), although even then elements of possible weakness were beginning to emerge (Benevolo. Luci ed ombre del turismo nautico, in Analisi gestionale dei porti turistici nella nautica da diporto, Il caso di Imperia, a cura di Quagli A. pp. 212–253, 2008). Domestic production grew at high rates, port facilities were multiplying and new ports were designed because the offer of berths, at least in many areas of the country, was not able to meet the potential demand.

The Effects of the Crisis on Nautical Tourism: An Analysis of the Italian Situation Regarding Port Features, Linked Economic Activities and Taxation

Since 2008 the Italian nautical industry has gone through a period of uninterrupted crisis with serious consequences both of an economic nature and in terms of loss of jobs. In particular, the sector of pleasure boating has undergone profound upheaval which has essentially affected three areas.

Quality of life in Italian cities: a temporal comparison between before the crisis and after

Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to investigate the changes in well-being in the Italian reality, in particular, through the study of major cities. The study is based on a set of data provided by the Italian Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) with the aim to highlight the Italian urban situation and the comparison between the well-being situation assessed in a pre-crisis context and the one observed after it, in order to understand how events have influenced levels of well-being in the main Italian cities. Design/methodology/approach - The paper aims to examine the quality of life (QoL) levels in the metropolitan cities, using data from the URBES report (a report that provides data and information concerning the Italian urban situation), published in 2013, which investigates QoL and well-being in major Italian cities. It is based on the framework of the “Benessere Equo e Sostenibile” report that appraises well-being in Italian regions by a great deal of variables belonging to 12 different dimensions. Using this data source, the authors will proceed to the construction of a composite well-being index. Findings - The paper intends to show how the well-being level in Italian cities has changed in recent years, taking into consideration ten different dimensions of well-being. The need to consider different dimensions of well-being for its comprehensive evaluation is widely discussed in the literature, and the framework provided by ISTAT is innovative in this sense. Originality/value - The paper presents an aggregate measure of well-being in Italian cities on the basis of new theoretical concepts and complete and detailed data.

A Non-compensative Index for Country Risk in OECD Countries

In the last few years a fast growth of international lending and foreign investment has been happening. As a consequence of the large flow of capital going towards new developing countries, the risk exposure of the lenders and investors is rising, and country risk analysis becomes more and more important for the international financial operators. In the present paper we propose a non-compensatory index to reckon the country risk (since now, Country Risk) in OECD countries: the Mazziotta Pareto Index (MPI). It assumes the “non-substitutability” of the dimensions, all of them being considered of the same importance, without any compensation possible among them. The indicator classifies the Ocse with OECD into six main groups, according to their high or low country risk. Although based on a small number of variables, the MPI can to assess quite correctly the pre-figurative “latent dimensions” of the Country Risk in the short run. The proposed index sheds light particularly on the risk linked to political-economical events and decisions, and on the public finance. The Country Risk Index proposed allows to asses international country risk ratings comparatively, and to single out the relevance of economic, financial and political risk as components of a general risk rating.

Socioeconomic status and waiting times for health services: An international literature review and evidence from the Italian National Health System

In the absence of priority criteria, waiting times are an implicit rationing instrument where the absence or limited use of prices creates an excess of demand. Even in the presence of priority criteria, waiting times may be unfair because they reduce health care demand of patients in lower socio-economic conditions due to high opportunity costs of time or a decay in their health level. Significant evidence has shown a relationship between socioeconomic status and the length of waiting time. The first phase of the study involved an extensive review of the existent literature for the period of 2002-2016 in the main databases (Scopus, PubMed and Science Direct). Twenty-eight met the eligibility criteria. The 27 papers were described and classified. The e mpirical objective of this study was to determine whether socioeconomic characteristics affect waiting time for different health services in the Italian national health system. The services studied were specialist visits, diagnostics tests and elective surgeries. A classification tree and logistic regression models were implemented. Data from the 2013 Italian Health National Survey were used. The analysis found heterogeneous results for different types of service. Individuals with lower education and economic resources have a higher risk of experiencing excessive waiting times for diagnostic and specialist visits. For elective surgery, socioeconomic inequalities are present but appear to be lower.

Cultural Well-Being and GDP Per Capita in Italy: Empirical Evidence

Social and cultural participation has always been a means to promote high economic growth and the development of the individual in a given society. Public and private institutions often try to make available efforts and resources to promote the usability of free time and social participation. This paper uses data from the multipurpose survey on Italian households, conducted by the Italian Institute of Statistics, and it analyses the relationship between cultural capability and the income and economic means of Italian households through the construction of a composite indicator of cultural well‐being. The analysis of the individual indicators of education and cultural participation makes it pos‐ sible to study issues related to the development of social capital in the northern and southern areas, thus highlighting the gap and enabling the decision‐maker to apply pos‐ sible corrections.

Carlo Cattaneo (1801–1869), Lombard Philosopher and Economist, Liberal Beyond Federalism

Carlo Cattaneo is a prominent character of Italian Risorgimento, that is the political process that built Italy in the 19th century. According to him, the economic development depends on the same principles which the progress of civilization and ideas is founded on: freedom, will, intelligence. With his deep humanist animus, he is enlightened, because he believes in the human intelligence as spring of progress; is positivist, thanks to his trust in applied science; is liberal, since he thinks that only freedom can feed human intelligence. At the same time, he is a man of Romanticism, with his confidence in the possibility of overcoming all hindrances through liberty and will. As a true liberal, Cattaneo can hardly be classified in just one stream of thinking. The paper is organised as follows: after the Introduction, the second and the third paragraph give information about the historical and economic context of his activity. The fourth paragraph deals with his political vision and the fifth with his approach to political economy. The link between federalism and freedom, and the original idea of collective intelligence (psicologia delle menti associate) emerge. Finally, in the sixth paragraph a few concluding remarks are proposed.

Un indicatore per la misurazione della partecipazione culturale e sociale nelle regioni italiane

Da sempre la partecipazione sociale e culturale rappresenta un mezzo per favorire la crescita economica elevata e lo sviluppo dell’individuo in una determinata societa. Oggi le istituzioni pubbliche e private cercano spesso di mettere a disposizione sforzi e mezzi per favorire la fruibilita del tempo libero e della partecipazione sociale. L’Indagine Multiscopo sulle famiglie italiane, condotta dall’Istituto Italiano di Statistica (ISTAT), fornisce una vasta gamma di dati specifici al fine di valutare particolari aspetti della vita della popolazione italiana. Il presente lavoro analizza questo insieme di dati attraverso la costruzione di un indicatore composito, misurato attraverso il metodo di Borda, utile ad indicare in quali circostanze possono aversi alti livelli di partecipazione sociale e culturale. Esso viene messo a confronto con il reddito disponibile pro-capite per verificare la correlazione tra le possibilita reddituali ed economiche delle famiglie e le loro capacita di partecipare alla vita sociale nel contesto in cui operano.

Effects of Labour Market Flexibility in the Long Run: Evidence from the Italian Case (1977-2009)

The present paper studies whether labour market deregulation is correlated with employment creation in Italy and the decline of trade union power. Our hypothesis is that the correlation does not hold, and that flexible contracts facilitated the dichotomy between industry and tertiary, without causing it. To test it, we first apply principal component analysis, then regression. The hypothesis is almost always confirmed. Flexible contracts are not correlated with youth employment creation, whilst trade union decline is correlated with macroeconomic indicators different from flexible contracts. These interventions facilitated a process already underway, caused by a structural change in the production paradigm.