This paper investigates the effects of public childcare availability in Italy on mothers' working status and children's scholastic achievements. We use a newly available dataset containing individual standardized test scores of pupils attending second grade of primary school in 2008-09 in...

In this paper we explore the relationship between parents’ inputs, childcare inputs and child cognitive outcomes using one of the few data sources available for Italy, the ISFOL-PLUS dataset. Our empirical results indicate that mothers’ work, in reducing the time devoted to children, has...

In this paper we utilize a model of household investments in the development of children to explore the impact of various transfer policies on the distribution of child outcomes. We develop a cost criterion that can be used to compare the cost effectiveness of unrestricted, restricted, and...

Using different econometric specifications this paper analyzes the relationship between the time parents spend with their children, child-related expenditure and the results obtained by them, with particular attention to gender differences. The authors use PSID-CDS data from 1997 to 2007 and...

While a large literature has focused on the impact of parental investments on child cognitive development, very little is known about the role of child’s own investments. Information on how children invest their time separately from parents is probably little informative for babies and...

While a large literature has focused on the impact of parental investments on child cognitive development, very little is known about the role of child?s own in- vestments. Information on how children invest their time separately from parents is probably little informative for babies and...

In this paper we utilize a model of household investments in the cognitive development of children to explore the impact of various transfer policies on the distribution of child cognitive outcomes in target populations. We develop a cost criterion that can be used to compare the cost...

According to the agenda for employment set by the EU in 2000 for the following ten years, the target for female employment was set at 60 per cent for the year 2010. While Northern and most Continental countries have achieved this quantitative target, the Mediterranean countries are lagging...

In Italy the participation of women has not increased very much in the last few decades relative to other developed countries and it is still among the lowest in Europe. The female employment rate stands almost 13 percentage points below the EU average and 22 below the Lisbon target. One of the...

In spite of relevant differences between countries, a common international pattern emerges: daughters leave parental homes earlier than sons. Drawing upon the European Community Household Panel, we explore the impacts of various factors that affect daughters' and sons' home-leaving decisions....