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This paper presents measures of differential mortality in Italy by educational level. The results refer to the year 2001 because the census is the only source providing data about population by level of education; as to deaths the data are provided by death certificates. As often happens, in order to compute differential mortality using these period frequencies it was necessary to confront problems both in the use of unlinked records and in relation to limitations in statistical documents; that is why we classified the population in only two groups: one with a low level of education and the other with a high level. We used a logit relational method to build life tables according to the levels of education. Particular attention was given to expectation of life at the ages from 35 to 65. At 35 years of age the expectation of life for a person with a low level of education is about 7.5 years less than for a person of a higher level in case of a male, and 6.5 years less in case of a female. The tendency continues, and at the age of 65 the expectation for those with a lower level is one quarter less in case of males and one fifth less in case of females. We found that a linear relationship exists between life expectancy and standardized rates among the Italian provinces; the same relation is also true for the analogous indicators of differential mortality by educational level.

We investigate the role of individual labor income as a moderator of parental subjective well-being trajectories before and after the first childbirth in Germany, a very low fertility country. Analyzing German Socioeconomic Panel Survey data, we found that income matters negatively for parental subjective well-being after childbirth, though with important differences by education and gender. In particular, among better educated parents, the richer see the arrival of a child more negatively. These findings contribute to the debate on the relationship between income and fertility adding information on how parents perceive the birth of a child beyond the strict financial cost of childbearing and raising. Results are discussed in terms of preferences among different groups of parents, costs of children, and work and family balance. Results are robust to potential endogeneity between income and childbirth, as well as for alternative measures of income.

The spread of high-speed Internet epitomizes the digital revolution, affecting several aspects of our life. Using German panel data, we test whether the availability of broadband Internet influences fertility choices in a low-fertility setting, which is well-known for the difficulty to combine work and family life. We exploit a strategy devised by Falck et al. (2014) to obtain causal estimates of the impact of broadband on fertility. We find positive effects of high-speed Internet availability on the fertility of high-educated women aged 25 and above. Effects are not statistically significant both for men, low-educated women, and under 25. We also show that broadband access significantly increases the share of women reporting teleworking or part-time working. Furthermore, we find positive effects on time spent with children and overall life satisfaction. Our findings are consistent with the hypothesis that high-speed Internet allows high-educated women to conciliate career and motherhood, which may promote fertility with a “digital divide”. At the same time, higher access to information on the risks and costs of early pregnancy and childbearing may explain the negative effects on younger adults.

Scarcity of female academics has been well documented for math-intensive or STEM fields. We investigate whether a lack of female instructors creates a demand for diversity on the student side. In an incentivized instructor-choice experiment on MTurk, we experimentally vary the gender balancedness of the instructor pool and let participants choose one additional instructor among one male and one female. We find that only women are more likely to choose the female instructor when the pool of instructors is male-dominated, suggesting that female students appreciate a more balanced instructor pool if female professors are scarce. We further document that women also appreciate diversity (though to a lesser extent) if the scarce gender is of the opposite sex. In contrast, men only appreciate diversity if the scarce gender is their own.

This paper investigates how social interactions among friends shape fertility. We specifically examine whether and how friends' fertility behaviour affects an individual's transition to parenthood. By integrating insights from economic and sociological theories, we elaborate on the mechanisms via which interactions among friends might affect an individual's risk of becoming a parent. By exploiting the survey design of the Add Health data, we follow a strategy that allows us to properly identify interaction effects and distinguish them from selection and contextual effects. We engage in a series of discrete time event history models with random effect at the dyadic level. Results show that, net of confounding effects, a friend's childbearing increases an individual's risk of becoming a parent. We find a short-term, curvilinear effect: an individual's risk of childbearing starts increasing after a friend's childbearing, it reaches its peak around two years later, and then decreases.

We empirically investigate the existence of the Environmental Kuznets Curve (EKC) focusing on a sample of 39 countries in the period 1996-2014. Using an interaction model, we also analyze whether the effectiveness of environmental taxes in reducing CO 2 emissions depends on the quality of political institutions. Our results show that the inverted U-shaped relationship between environmental stress and economic development holds independently of the quality of political institutions and environment related taxes. Moreover, an increase in the environmental tax revenue has the expected reducing effect on environmental degradation only in countries with more consolidated democratic institutions, higher civil society participation and less corrupt governments. Our findings also show that the effects on environmental stress of revenue neutral shifts to different tax sources depend not only on the quality of political institutions, but also on the kind of externality the policymaker aims at correcting.

Using age specific fertility rates of Italian and Swedish women aged between 15 and 49 years old I examine the presence of fertility postponement in period and cohort outputs. Period data consist of standard five-year age group rates ranging from 1960 to 2005. Cohort data are arranged on age specific year groups born between years 1930-1970. The method used in this work is based upon quadratic spline interpolation procedure, developed by Carl P. Schmertmann (2003), in which three index ages determine the schedules shape. The recent fertility postponing behavior is investigated through the help of five index ages, which show the dynamics of postponement both in cohort and period data.

The aim of this paper is to study whether politicians manipulate fiscal policy to extract private rents. We focus on the local personal income tax (PIT), in the setting of Italian cities, which is a progressive instrument that allows mayors to set different rates to distinct wage groups. We exploit discontinuities in mayors’ salaries, that are based on population thresholds, to study whether mayors systematically apply lower rates to their own tax bracket. The main results document large rent-seeking activity in fiscal policy. First, we show that when mayors’s salary is exogenously located in the following tax bracket this receives a significantly lower tax rate than the previous bracket, compared to the control group. Second, we show that this rent-seeking activity is highly detrimental for the public treasury, with a considerable reduction in fiscal revenues. And finally, we document that the monetary gains for rent-seeker politicians are rather limited. These results suggest that when fiscal policy is prone to be manipulated politicians do not hesitate to engage in rent-seeking activities even in case of little profits.

Over recent decades the family formation process radically changed in Europe. Even though similar trends have been observed across the continent there are still important differences between countries. Using the theoretical approach and conceptual definitions given by Ajzen's (1991) theory of planned behavior without applying its empirical model, the main focus of the present paper is on the way in which paid job and unpaid work and women's attitudes towards them influence the decision to have a second child. The study uses a qualitative approach, by means of the investigation of in-depth interviews with 27 women in reproductive ages in Cagliari, one of the lowest-low fertility contexts in Italy, itself a lowestlow fertility country. Mothers were divided into six different groups on the basis of their intentions to have a second child. The results demonstrate that the theoretical framework is able to highlight substantial differences in attitudes and perceived behavioural controls among the women with different intentions for childbearing.

Students' experiences at university prepare them for a future in which they are expected to engage in life-long learning. Self-efficacy theory suggests that a persons beliefs in their capacity to learn will influence their participation in learning. This paper describes development of a new scale to measure self-efficacy for learning (SEL) among university students, designed to be appropriate for both campus-based and online learning, and for administration in a battery of tests on student development. Undergraduate students (n = 265) in a business school in Milan and a department of psychology in Rome participated in the final study. Beginning with a random sample of 200 participants, item response theory and exploratory factor analysis with LISREL were used to identify a 10 item scale to measure SEL. The scales properties were confirmed in a second random sample of 200 participants, using confirmatory factor analysis in LISREL. Correlation with expected grades was, consistent with earlier studies, moderately small (.22), but statistically significant.