The aim of the project is to analyze the working histories of men and women and their implications for health, fertility and labour market outcomes, including pensions. Our analysis will be focused on Europe also in comparison with the United States. A particular attention will be devoted to Italy that is an interesting case-study as it has been engaged in an intense process of labour market deregulation and a series of pension reforms since the `90s and it is characterized by very low female activity and fertility rates, among the lowest in Europe.
Specifically, the project will be developed along two main directions. The first aims at investigating the path-dependency of individual employment trajectories and their influence on the prosecution of the working life. In more detail, the project will analyse long-lasting effects of career trajectories and discontinuities on employability, wages and future pensions, also focusing on how the exposition to risks related to career differ by individuals' characteristic, e.g. by gender, citizenship, skills, industry. Furthermore, the project will inquire the link between employment trajectories and fertility choices, also investigating how these choices, together with previous individuals' employment pattern, affect later outcomes in the labour market (e.g. unemployment risk, type of contract, wages) and pension wealth.
The second line of research will investigate the link between long-term employment trajectories and individuals' health, focusing both on middle aged individuals and on the elderly and analyzing how this link differs according to main individual characteristics (e.g., gender, education, marital status).
The two parts will be carried out simultaneously, emphasizing the policy implications implied by our main findings. In the project, we will carry out both theoretical and empirical analyses.
This project aims at advancing the literature on the link between long-term employment trajectories and several individuals' outcomes, combining a theoretical and an empirical approach.
First, we will inquire on the consequences of economic insecurity by providing original theoretical models about the mechanisms linking past and expected employment trajectories to fertility choices, also looking at the duration of the period out of the labour force after childbirth. More in detail, an original model, which will be tested empirically for Italy, will be presented to describe men and women decisions on whether and when to give birth, how long to stay on maternity leave, whether to return to work afterwards and when to retire. The theoretical literature on gender-specific life-cycle choices about occupation, fertility and child care - to which we aim to contribute - is not vast (exceptions are two recent papers [1] and [3]). In the empirical test, with respect to the existing empirical literature that considers statutory maternity leave, we will use both the ISFOL-plus survey and the AD-SILC dataset, which provides a unique opportunity to consider the effective duration of maternity leave.
The literature inquires the link between economic insecurity and citizens' political support for social policies mainly carrying out cross-country comparisons on preferences revealed by individuals differently exposed to labour market risks in cross-country surveys on individual values (e.g. [4] and [5]). We will advance the literature developing a theoretical model that will investigate the feedback, via political economy mechanisms, on implemented redistributive measures and specific welfare policies engendered by the changing policy support of individuals hit by economic insecurity and uncertainty of their working career.
On the empirical side, also due to limits in available data, most of studies analyze the effects of labour market insecurity looking at few dimensions of the employment status (e.g. temporary vs open-ended arrangements or employed vs unemployed), following individuals over a short time span and focusing only on short-time effects of labor market events. The few studies that take a long-run perspective demonstrate that exposure to youth unemployment and multiple exposure to unemployment during the life course have persistent effects on subsequent labour market outcomes and have scarring effects on health ([15] and [16]).
This project will advance the existing literature by making use of administrative longitudinal data for Italy - that track individuals over the whole career - to test the relationship between the various types of employment trajectories - identified in a long span of time and considering multiple dimensions of these trajectories, e.g. periods in unemployment, occupation, industries, wage levels, contractual arrangements - and several short and long-term individual's outcomes.
In more detail, we will first investigate whether career discontinuities in working history, i.e. experience gaps, have persistent effects on subsequent career profiles, earnings patterns and expected pension benefits over the career, distinguishing the effects according to individual characteristics, e.g. gender, skills, and, applying quantile regressions panel techniques to test whether different mechanisms act along the earning distribution.
We will also advance the literature estimating the link between long-term employment trajectories and individual's health by making use both of self-rated health and the date of death that are recorded in the AD-SILC dataset. As mentioned, the available evidence is largely based on short-run dynamic approaches and restricted to few employment statuses, while a consensus points toward the need of a long-term perspective to detect cumulative disadvantages fostered by the association between health and employment histories. Exploiting the richness of administrative longitudinal data, we will inquire into the relationship between long-term employment trajectories and investigate the link between multi-year labour market trajectories and self-rated health or mortality at the end of this period, focusing both on those still in employment at middle ages and on the elderly (distinguishing those still active from the retired). To this aim, we will also assess whether some shocks (e.g. a firing episode) have a long-lasting effect on health and possible scarring effects related to labour market outcomes on individual's health emerge.
When possible according to data availability, these analyses will be also carried out in a cross-country comparison perspective by making use of EU-SILC and, mainly, SHARE data.