The Interrelationship of Union Formation and Fertility in Italy: The Role of Economic Uncertainty

Giammarco Alderotti, Sapienza University of Rome
Valentina Tocchioni , Università di Firenze
Alessandra De Rose, Sapienza Università di Roma
Daniele Vignoli, University of Florence

The relationship between employment uncertainty and family formation has become an important issue in demographic research. Uncertainty has a negative impact on family formation, since precarious jobs lead to postpone or forego partnership and parenthood. Despite union formation and childbearing are two interrelated processes, most studies focus on the effect of employment uncertainty on either union formation or fertility. However, fertility does not occur in isolation, but within relationships. A limitation of most previous studies is that they suffer from selection bias: because only partnered individuals are considered, these studies disregard how some men and women are selected into union. Using simultaneous hazard models, our aim is to analyze the interrelationship between union formation and fertility, focusing on the role played by employment uncertainty. We do this for the Italian context, characterized by high youth unemployment, traditional values with a strong preference towards marriage (with respect to cohabitation) and low fertility.

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 Presented in Session 97. Economic Precariousness and the Family