Economic models of household behavior typically yield the prediction that increases in schooling levels and wage rates of married women lead to increases in their labor supply and reductions in fertility. In Italy, as well as in other Southern European countries, low labor market participation...

In this paper we focus in particular on the participation of women with children, considering the peculiar characteristics of the Italian labour market, the social service system as well as the legislation regarding maternity leave, which have jointly constrained the possibility for women to...

In this paper, we aim to explore the impact of social policies and labour market characteristics on women’s decisions regarding working and having children, using data from the European Community Household Panel (ECHP). We estimate the two decisions jointly, including in the analysis, beyond...

This paper analyzes the time allocation of Italian spouses to paid work, childcare and household work. The literature suggests that Italian husbands contribute the least to unpaid household work, relative to other European countries, while Italian women have the lowest market employment rates....

In this paper we present important empirical evidence regarding recent trends in women’s participation and fertility in European countries, and provide several interpretations of the differences across countries. Several recent analyses have considered labour supply and fertility as a joint...

The importance parents give to time spent with their children for their future behavioural and cognitive development deeply affected the patterns of time allocation of both working and non-working parents in all developed countries in the last decades. We compare the two existing waves of the...

In this paper, we formulate a dynamic utility maximization model of female labor force participation and fertility choices and estimate approximate decision rules using data on married women in Italy, Spain and France. The pattern of estimated state dependence effects across countries is...

We formulate a model of household behavior in which cooperation is costly and in which these costs vary across households. Some households rationally decide to behave noncooperatively, which in our context is an e?cient outcome. An intriguing feature of the model is that, while the welfare of...

Two key issues in the literature on female labor supply are: (1) if persistence in employment status is due to unobserved heterogeneity or state dependence, and (2) if fertility is exogenous to labor supply. Until recently, the consensus was that unobserved heterogeneity is very important, and...

Recent research reveals that divorce negatively impacts children’s welfare as a consequence of the reduction in monetary and time contributions of the non-custodial parent. When the custody arrangement is sole custody, the variables that link the absent parent to the child are visitations and...