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In this paper we investigate the sensitivity of stochastic population forecasts produced by means of the Scaled Model of Error with respect to the choice of the correlation parameters. In particular, we evaluate the impact that a change in the specification of the correlation of the age-specific fertility forecast error increments across time and age and of the correlation of the age-specific mortality forecast error increments across time, age and sex has on the forecasts of the Total Fertility Rate and of the Male and Female Life Expectancies respectively. In our opinion a sensitivity analysis of this kind is extremely useful, since up to now the relevance and the impact of the choice of the Scaled Model of Error input parameters has not be discussed in detail. Such analysis will provide users with a better understanding of the model itself.

We theoretically show that when mothers need to buy childcare services not only if they work but also if they want to search actively for a job, a reduction in the price of childcare will increase their likelihood of searching but may decrease their willingness to accept a job offer and therefore lower employment. We test these predictions empirically by means of a Regression Discontinuity design and find that the introduction in Italy of pre-kindergarten, a much cheaper alternative to day care for 2-year-old children, increased both participation in the labour market and employment of mothers of eligible children. This effect was driven largely by a significant decrease in the stated reservation wage. For a full evaluation of the policy we finally provide evidence that pre-kindergarten did not affect children’s cognitive development as measured at second grade.

For a sample of Central and Eastern European countries, characterized by historically high female labor force participation and currently low fertility rates, we analyze whether fathers’ increased involvement in the family (housework and childcare) has the potential of increasing both fertility and maternal employment. Using two waves of the Generations and Gender Survey, we show that a higher fathers’ involvement in the family increases the subsequent likelihood that the mother has a second child and works full-time. Men’s fertility and work decisions are instead unrelated to mothers’ housework and childcare. We also show that fathers’ involvement in housework plays a more important role than involvement in childcare. The role of fathers’ involvement in housework is confirmed when we consider women who initially wanted or intended to have a child, women whose partner also wanted a child or women who intended to continue working.

In this paper we analyse the relationship between happiness and childbearing taking a comparative perspective. We argue that fertility and happiness are somewhat linked and we investigate whether there are important differences across European countries. Using happiness as a welfare measure offers important benefits over income especially when interest lies in understanding how individuals' wellbeing is associated with childbearing outcomes. We use the European Social Survey (ESS) and apply simple regression techniques, controlling for country differences, and find indeed a positive and significant association between happiness and childbearing. However, parents do not appear to be consistently happier in some countries than in others. The final set of analyses reveals a very strong interconnection between, childbearing, partnership and happiness.

This paper analyzes how advanced Medieval and Early Modern Italian economies attempted to cope with famines. First, it provides an overview of the occurrence of famines and food shortages in Italy from the fifteenth to the seventeenth century, underlining the connections with overall climatic and demographic trends. Second, it focuses on the 1590s famine (the worst to affect Italy in the period), providing a general discussion and interpretation of its causes and characteristics, and describing and evaluating the strategies for coping with the crisis that developed within the Republic of Genoa and the Duchy of Ferrara. The article argues that when such a large-scale food crisis as that of the 1590s occurred, public action played a key role in providing relief.

This paper relates social mobility and social stratification to higher education policy. We show that higher‐education policy which leads to differences in quality and per‐student expenditure as well as in admission procedures between standard and elite universities, is a key factor in generating permanent social stratification and social immobility. We develop an intergenerational model which shows that a two‐tier higher education characterised by a division between elite and standard universities can be a key factor in generating permanent social stratification, social immobility and self‐reproduction of the ‘elite’. In our approach, low mobility is essentially explained by the differences in quality and in selection between elite and standard universities. A key result is that the wider the quality gap and the difference in per‐student expenditures between elite and standard universities, the less social mobility. This is because a larger quality gap reinforces the weight of family backgrounds at the expense of personal ability. Our simulations show that this impact can be large. These findings provide theoretical bases for the impact of higher education policy on social mobility.

In this paper, I investigate the role of family trajectory, i.e. the whole sequence of family events during the life course of early adults in shaping their health outcomes. I jointly consider union formation and childbearing, since the two life domains are highly connected and their intersections may have an effect on health outcomes. Data come from Wave I and Wave IV of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health). The paper is divided in two parts. First, I focus on transitions and investigate if changes in timing (when events happen), quantum (what and how many transitions) and sequencing (in what order), have an effect on the health of young women. In the second part, I classify life course trajectories into six groups representing different ideal-types of family trajectories and I explore the association of these trajectories with health outcomes. Results suggest that family trajectories play an important role on different health outcomes. Controlling for selection and background characteristics, precocious and "non-normative" transitions are associated with lower self-reported health and higher propensity of smoking and drinking.

Agent-based modelling and numerical simulations are means that facilitate exploring the structural and dynamic characteristics of systems which may prove intractable with analytical methods. This contribution examines the issues related to them with a particular attention to their use in the study of social economic and ecological systems. Besides a general description, the possibilities, limitations and their relationship with other more traditional investigation methods are examined. Special focus is put on the assessment of their validation and reliability. Finally an application example is provided. A simple model is built to analyse the movements of tourists and the relationship between these and the attractiveness of a tourism destination. The results are discussed along with possible future developments.

We empirically investigate the determinants of the female decision of investing in post-secondary education, focusing on the role played by the context where young women take their education decision. We first develop a stylized two-period model to analyse the female decision of investing in education and highlight two main determinants: the time to be devoted to child care and the probability of working in a skilled job. We then use data on educational decisions of women in the 17-21 age group drawn from EU-Silc, available for the years 2004-2008. From the same survey we construct context indicators at the regional level, and exploit regional variability to identify how women's educational investment reacts to changes in the surrounding context. We find that the share of working women with children below 5 and the share of women with managerial positions or self-employed positively affect the probability that women enrol in post-secondary education. The same does not hold for men.

In this paper, we show that unemployment increases child neglect in the United States during the period from 2004 to 2012. A one percentage point increase in the unemployment rate leads to a 20 percent increase in neglect. We identify this effect by instrumenting for the county-level unemployment rate with a Bartik instrument, which we create as the weighted average of the national-level unemployment rates across each of twenty industries, where the weights are the county-level fraction of the employed working-age population in each industry at the start of the sample period. An important mechanism behind this effect is that parents lack social and private safety nets. The effect on neglect is smaller in states that introduce longer extensions to unemployment benefits, and is greater in counties where an initially larger fraction of children are not covered by health insurance. We find no evidence that the effect is driven by alcohol consumption or divorce.