Do.Re.Mee Seminar
You may follow the seminar at the following link.
"Norms, Aspirations, and the Economics of Life Choices: A Comparative Study in Seven Countries" by Chen Peng - Bocconi (with Letizia Mencarini, Alícia Adsera, Manuela Stranges and Arnstein Aassve)
and
"The Spillovers of Child Disability on Peers' Education" by Alice Dominici - IMT Lucca (with Massimo Anelli, Nicoletta Balbo and Sofía Sierra Vásquez)
and
"Counting fetuses, counting risks: regulations and medical practices of multifetal pregnancy reduction in Japan and Italy" by Mio Tamakoshi - WZB Berlin Social Science Center and Visiting PhD Student at Bocconi
PAPER 1 - "Norms, Aspirations, and the Economics of Life Choices: A Comparative Study in Seven Countries"
Speaker
Chen Peng (Bocconi University)
Abstract
We conduct a seven-country study: Chile, China, France, Italy, Mexico, Spain, and the United States, on age norms and attitudes across the life course among adults aged 20 to 44. The survey combines multiple components: a conjoint experiment on fertility decision-making; a rich set of closed-ended questions on age norms, gender attitudes, fertility motivations, time-use patterns, and lifestyle measures; and three open-ended modules designed to capture how young adults make sense of their life goals and the meaning of parenthood. The open-ended questions probe three dimensions of life choices. First, respondents reflect on what they hoped to achieve by their late thirties or early forties, and how they feel about their progress, providing insight into aspirations, temporal expectations, and self-evaluation. Second, they describe the benefits and sacrifices associated with parenthood, either from experience (for parents) or anticipation (for non-parents). These narratives reveal how individuals frame the emotional, economic, and identity-related stakes of parenting beyond structured survey items. Together, these qualitative responses enrich our understanding of how people articulate life priorities, reconcile unmet goals, and weigh the perceived rewards and costs of having children. At the core of the study is a preregistered conjoint experiment that asks respondents to evaluate hypothetical couples considering a first or second child. Profiles vary in household income, the woman’s income share, projected income changes, losses in personal free time for each partner, and the woman’s age. This design isolates the causal influence of monetary resources, gendered opportunity costs, time constraints, and age in shaping fertility intentions. We estimate average marginal component effects, willingness-to-pay metrics, and heterogeneity by gender, socioeconomic status, and gender-role attitudes, and compare results across countries to understand how cultural and normative contexts shape contemporary fertility decision-making.
Bio
Chen Peng is a postdoctoral researcher at Bocconi University. She holds a PhD in Public Policy from Bocconi University, an MRes in Social and Behavioural Science from Groningen University and a BA in Psychology from the University of Rochester. Her research focuses on Family, Marriage, Social and Political Polarization, with the application of experimental designs and computational methods to investigate how social norms and demographic behaviors co-evolve.
PAPER 2 - "The Spillovers of Child Disability on Peers' Education"
Speaker
Alice Dominici (IMT Lucca)
Abstract
We study the causal effect of having classmates with disabilities on schooling outcomes. The use of Chilean administrative data covering more than 1 million students allows us to overcome selection issues in existing studies and to conduct a causal analysis despite the low incidence of disabilities in the population. We find that exposure to a classmate with a disability decreases primary school test scores, with mathematics grades experiencing more lasting effects. We document strong heterogeneity in effects by type of disability: negative effects are driven by intellectual disabilities, whereas language disorders cause improvement in Spanish scores, suggesting positive spillovers from targeted support measures. Moreover, negative spillovers are strongly or fully moderated by maintaining the same teacher for more than one grade, a relatively simple intervention recommended for a wide array of other policy targets. Ongoing research will analyze the mediating role of classroom environment.
Bio
Alice Dominici is an Assistant Professor of Economics at IMT Lucca since November 2024, and a Research Affiliate at Bocconi University, Dondena Centre, where she did my Postdoc. She received a PhD in Economics from the European University Institute (EUI) in September 2024. Her primary research fields are historical political economy and health economics.
PAPER 3 - "Counting fetuses, counting risks: regulations and medical practices of multifetal pregnancy reduction in Japan and Italy"
Speaker
Mio Tamakoshi (WZB Berlin Social Science Center and Visiting PhD Student at Bocconi)
Abstract
I examine how the regulatory environment of abortion and medically assisted reproduction (MAR) shape the medical practices of multifetal pregnancy reduction (MFPR), a procedure to eliminate one or more fetal lives in multiple pregnancies. Drawing on the literature of medical sociology and science and technology studies (STS), the study takes a comparative perspective on Italy and Japan. The two countries have responded to the issue of MAR-induced multiple pregnancies in two diverging ways; whereas in Italy, the restrictive MAR legislation has limited measures to prevent multiple pregnancies during MAR treatments but made MFPR legal, the Japanese self-regulation of MAR by the professional associations has focused on preventing multiple pregnancies while leaving MFPR in a legal vacuum. I employ qualitative methods, and my main data is interviews with doctors who perform MFPR. In the presentation, I will show preliminary results from the data collected in Japan, as well as comparative content analyses of medical discourses in Japan and Italy.
Bio
Mio Tamakoshi is a PhD candidate in sociology and a doctoral researcher at the research group “Varieties of Reproduction Regimes” at the WZB Berlin Social Science Center in Germany. She earned her Bachelor of Arts and Sciences from University of Tokyo, Japan and her Master of Social Sciences from University of Helsinki, Finland.