Working papers results

A fundamental switch in the fertilitydevelopment relationship has occurred so that among highly developed countries, further socioeconomic development may reverse the declining fertility trend. Here we shed light on the mechanisms underlying this reversal by analyzing the links between development and age and cohort patterns of fertility, as well as the role of gender equality. Using data from 1975 to 2008 for over 100 countries, we show that the reversal exists both in a period and a cohort perspective and is mainly driven by increasing older reproductive-age fertility. We also show that the positive impact of development on fertility in high-development countries is conditional on gender equality: countries ranking high in development as measured by health, income, and education but low in gender equality continue to experience declining fertility. Our findings suggest that gender equality is crucial for countries wishing to reap the fertility dividend of high development.

Good estimates of HIV prevalence are important for policy makers in order to plan control programs and interventions. Although population-based surveys are now considered the "gold standard" to monitor the HIV epidemic, they are usually plagued by problems of nonignorable nonresponse. This paper uses the partial identification approach to assess the uncertainty caused by missing HIV status. We show how to exploit the availability of panel data and the absorbing nature of HIV infection to narrow the worst-case bounds without imposing assumptions on the missing-data mechanism. Applied to longitudinal data from rural Malawi, the Malawi Diffusion and Ideational Change Project (MDICP), our approach results in a reduction of the width of the worst-case bounds by about 18.2 percentage points in 2004, 13.2 percentage points in 2006, and 2.4 percentage points in 2008. We also use plausible instrumental variable and monotone instrumental variable restrictions to further narrow the bounds.

The general aim of this paper is to investigate the educational aspirations of the children of immigrants living in Italy and attending the last year of primary school (8th grade). We look at the educational aspirations both as a predictor of educational choice and as a measure of social integration. We consider both secondary school track and university aspirations as indicators of educational preferences in the short and long run. Data have been collected during the 2005-2006 school year and they come from the ITAGEN survey: the first Italian nation-wide extensive survey on children with at least one foreign-born parent. First, we analyze association between aspirations and structural characteristics (e.g. migration status and country of origin) and social aspects such as family socioeconomic status, and friendship ties. These aspects seem to be determinants in defining both short and long time aspirations, while long-term aspirations are not associated with migration status. Second, we investigate the relevance of context in delineating educational aspirations. To develop this second aspect we perform multilevel analysis that takes into account both individual and school level variables. Our hypothesis, confirmed both for short and long aspirations, is that attending a school where most of the Italian pupils have high educational aspirations may lead children of immigrants to enhance their own aspirations.

There is a growing literature considering the relationship between parental divorce and children's life-course patterns. However, there is no general consensus on whether parental separation accelerates or postpones children's transition to adulthood. The aim of this paper is to add to this literature by analyzing the effect of parental divorce on the timing of nest-leaving of young adults. After providing descriptive findings using the recent Generations and Gender Survey (GGS) for five European countries (France, Georgia, Hungary, Italy, Russia), we assess the extent to which the associations between divorce and nest-leaving timing is masked by different effects. First, do children of divorced parents develop different characteristics (e.g., human capital construction and socialization) which in turn make them leave the parental home at a different rate? Secondly, do children of divorced people leave the parental home at a different age because of the new family structure? Our findings show that children who experienced divorce leave home at a faster rate, but the last child in the household who would leave the mother alone delays his/her departure.

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 I study the determinants of height from birth to early adulthood in the Philippines. In order to do that, I specify a height production function. The structure of the production function allows height to be the result of the accumulation of inputs over time. I use a rich longitudinal data set on Filipino children born in 1983 and followed for more than 20 years. The results show that inputs from conception to birth are relevant at each age of the children. Nutrition inputs have a positive effect on the child's height, with similar effects across ages. The shorter the distance between the age when the nutrition input is applied and the age when height is measured, the higher the impact on height. The earlier disease inputs are experienced, the larger their negative effect on height. The older the child, the stronger the effects of past diseases. Thus my paper provides evidence on the importance of early life events also for final height.

Using the British Household Panel Survey this paper explores the extent to which marital and cohabiting unions differ with respect to the short term effects of union dissolution on psychological distress. We test the hypothesis that spouses experience larger negative effects but the results show that this difference is not statistically significant once the presence of children is controlled for. Having children is found to be a major source of psychological distress when one is going through union dissolution. However, it does not explain high psychological distress which seems to be associated with intrinsic factors (the personality trait neuroticism) rather than with contextual factors.

In this article we compare two techniques that are widely used in the analysis of life course trajectories, latent class analysis (LCA) and sequence analysis (SA). In particular, we focus on the use of these techniques as devices to obtain classes of individual life course trajectories. We first compare the consistency of the classification obtained via the two techniques using an actual dataset on the life course trajectories of young adults. Then, we adopt a simulation approach to measure the ability of these two methods to correctly classify groups of life course trajectories when specific forms of "random" variability are introduced within pre-specified classes in an artificial dataset. In order to do so, we introduce simulation operators that have a life course and/or observational meaning. Our results contribute on the one hand to outline the usefulness and robustness of findings based on the classification of life course trajectories through LCA and SA, on the other hand to illuminate the potential pitfalls of actual applications of these techniques.

This article analyzes social norms regulating selection of godparents in Italy and France and how they will be affected by demographic change. On the grounds of Vatican statistics and of the World Values Survey, it demonstrates that baptisms still occur for the vast majority of children in Catholic Europe and that birth rituals are considered important even by non-believers. Relying on historical data, it shows that the custom of selecting godparents from among kinsmen, currently dominant, is a recent development. A new survey about selection of godparents in Italy and France is used which shows that they are not chosen for religious, but for social-relational reasons. Selection of kinsmen is the norm, with uncles and aunts being the majority choice. For Italy, choice determinants are explored by means of multinomial regressions. The results are contrasted with demographic change to show that in lowest-low fertility countries current godparenthood models are bound to disappear.

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.