Silvana Salvini

Is temporary employment damaging to health? A longitudinal study on Italian workers

Working conditions have changed dramatically over recent decades in all the countries of European Union: permanent full-time employment characterized by job security and a stable salary is replaced more and more by temporary work, apprenticeship contracts, casual jobs and part-time work. The consequences of these changes on the general well-being of workers and their health represent an increasingly important path of inquiry. We add to the debate by answering the question: are Italian workers on temporary contracts more likely to suffer from poor health than those with permanent jobs? Our analysis is based on a sample of men and women aged 16-64 coming from the Italian longitudinal survey 2007-2010 of the European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions. We use the method of inverse-probability-of-treatment weights to estimate the causal effect of temporary work on self-rated health, controlling for selection effects. Our major findings can be summarized as follows: firstly, we show a negative association between temporary employment and health that results from a statistical causal effect in the work-to-health direction, and does not trivially derive from a selection of healthier individuals in the group of people who find permanent jobs (selection effect). Secondly, we find that temporary employment becomes particularly negative for the individuals health when it is prolonged over time. Thirdly, whereas temporary employment does not entail significant adverse consequences for men, the link between temporary employment and health is strongly harmful for Italian women.

Mediterranean fertility: towards a South-North convergence?

Mediterranean fertility: towards a South-North convergence? The fertility patterns of the lowest-low fertility countries of the northern Mediterranean are very different from those of the South-East, but recently fertility decline has been spreading rapidly in the region, especially in Maghreb countries. In certain countries the period total fertility rate among women with secondary education is less than two children per woman. These recent developments question the reputation of the South-East Mediterranean (apart from Turkey) as a bastion of family conservatism and as having a high fertility rate. But are these groups of educated women forerunners of a broader and more generalized spread of fertility decline or only a sign of a plurality of behaviours in the increasing heterogeneity of such societies, which are still very traditional but at the same time are undergoing modernization? Furthermore, are the characteristics of these women similar to those that were notably the determinants of the onset of fertility decline in northern Mediterranean countries? The aim of our study is to investigate the extent and the value of these recent demographic changes. The issue is whether they can be described in terms of a peculiar Mediterranean fertility pattern and whether South-East women are therefore moving along the same path taken by women in Mediterranean Europe towards exceptionally low fertility (a sort of “convergence assumption”), or whether this “developmental” theory is too simplistic and Eurocentric. We will seek to sketch an outline of fertility against the broad background of family formation patterns in the Mediterranean countries, using a macro-level description to build a grid of reference comparing the experience of northern and southern shore countries. We will also present some results of analysis of individual data with a view to outlining the determinants of fertility timing according to parity. Fecondita mediterranea: verso una convergenza nord-sud? I modelli di fecondita dei paesi della riva Sud-Est del Mediterraneo sono ancora molto diversi da quelli dei paesi della riva Nord, caratterizzati da livelli di fecondita estremamente bassa. Tuttavia, il declino della fecondita si sta diffondendo in tutta la regione, in particolare nel Maghreb. Infatti, in alcuni di questi paesi il tasso di fecondita totale di periodo, tra le donne con un’istruzione secondaria, e ormai inferiore ai due figli per donna. Questi recenti sviluppi mettono in discussione alcuni stereotipi relativi all’area sud-orientale del Mediterraneo, ad eccezione della Turchia, e che la descrivono come il “bastione” del conservatorismo familiare e dell’alta fecondita. Ma questi gruppi di donne istruite sono i precursori di una piu vasta e generale diffusione del calo della fecondita o solo il segnale di una pluralita di comportamenti in societa dalla crescente eterogeneita, ancora molto tradizionali ma, allo stesso tempo, sottoposte ad un processo di modernizzazione? Inoltre, le caratteristiche di queste donne sono simili a quelle che sono state le determinanti dell’inizio del calo della fecondita nei paesi del Nord del Mediterraneo? Il nostro studio vuole investigare la portata e il valore di questi recenti cambiamenti demografici. La questione e se si puo rintracciare uno specifico modello Mediterraneo di fecondita, e se, quindi, le donne del Sud-Est stanno percorrendo la stessa strada delle donne Mediterranee Europee verso una eccezionale bassa fecondita (in una sorta di “assunzione di convergenza”), o se, invece, questa teoria “evolutiva” sia troppo semplicistica ed eurocentrica. Con dati di tipo macro compariamo il quadro della fecondita e dei modelli di formazione familiare dei paesi delle due rive del Mediterraneo; con dati individuali indaghiamo invece le determinanti della intensita e cadenza della fecondita per parita.

Place of living and health inequality: a study for elderly Italians

The aim of this study is to explore if the context matters in explaining socioeconomic inequality in the self-rated health of Italian elderly people. Our hypothesis is that health status perception is associated with existing huge imbalances among Italian areas. A multilevel approach is applied to account for the natural hierarchical structure, as individuals nested in geographical regions. Multilevel logistic regression models are performed including both individual and contextual variables, using data from 2005 Italian Health survey. We prove that individual factors (compositional effect), even representing the most important correlates of health, do not completely explain intra-regional heterogeneity, confirming the existence of an autonomous contextual effect. These territorial differences are present among both Regions and large areas, two geographical aggregations relevant in the domain of health. Moreover, for some Regions, the account for contextual factors explains variations in perceived health, leading to an overthrow of the initial situation: these Regions perform better than expected in the field of health. For other Regions, the contextual elements introduced do not catch the milieu heterogeneity. In this regard, we expect, and solicit, a major effort toward data availability, qualitatively and quantitatively, that might help in explaining residual territorial heterogeneity in health perception, a fundamental starting point for targeting specific policy interventions.

Do Rational Choices Guide Family Formation and Dissolution in Italy

As social pressure to adhere to accepted standards recedes, individuals are freer to choose their preferred family arrangement. But their choices do not always follow a strictly rational approach: rather, they appear to be guided by a trial-and-error logic, which implies contradictions, loss of efficiency and, occasionally, low personal satisfaction. Modern welfare states, while supporting freedom of choices (which includes the possibility of change: e.g. divorce, or medically assisted fertility in one’s late years), must combine this with other targets, ranging from the empowerment of women to the protection of the weak (children, especially), to a system of incentives that eventually ensures socially acceptable outcomes, including a sufficient level of fertility. The now undisputed primacy of the individual will not destroy families, but it will deeply transform them, and increase their heterogeneity: relationships will increase in number but decrease in duration and intensity.

Demographic pressure and development in a gender perspective: a focus on sub-Saharan Africa

High fertility and demographic pressure – combined with lack of gender equality and women’s empowerment - may put in doubt development. The aim of our analysis is to study the role played by both the demographic pressure and social behavior on the Human Development Index (HDI) in the sub-Saharan Africa. After analyzing the territorial variability of HDI among and into some countries at district level in years around 1990, 2000 and 2010, we intend to understand if there is some form of association between Municipal Human Development Index and some indicators of socio-demographic structure.The hypothesis we want to verify is that the higher the level of demographic pressure (expressed by dependency ratios) and the worse the social context, the lower the level of development, according to the approach of “demographic window”. This study enriches the literature by exploring the effect of the demographic window of opportunity on economic growth at district level within some countries of sub-Saharan Africa, in relationship with some indicators of women’s status and gender equality as proxies of women’s empowerment. Our results demonstrate a negative effect of the dependent population (young and old people) and a positive effect of indices of women’s empowerment on development.In the model explaining the relation between development, dependency ratios and women’s empowerment at local level, the inclusion of the dummies of the countries does not change the effects of the covariates, thus suggesting that the former relationships are not mediated through the country-time variables