Many scholars recently highlighted the increase of individuals and families vulnerability in OECD countries. In Italy a clear sign of increase emerges observing the long-lasting worsening trends of subjective poverty and consumer confidence on personal condition indexes. Several factors can...

Since 2008 the global economy, following also the financial crisis, is facing a severe decline in economic activity and the economic estimates concerning the first quarter 2009 are even worse. While in the major industrialized economies Consumers Confidence Indicators (CCI) show common negative...

Since 2008 the global economy, following also the financial crisis, is facing a severe decline in economic activity and the economic estimates concerning the first quarter 2009 are even worse. The Italian Consumers Confidence Indicators (CCI), however, after a sharp fall beginning in 2007, is...

The Italian system of economic support for those on low incomes and for families is among the least effective in Europe. Its incoherent nature is shown by very large jumps in implicit marginal tax rates (taxation + family benefits). Italy needs a comprehensive reform of the treatment of income...

In many European countries, since the World War II, there has been a trend towards decentralization of health policy to lower levels of governments, while more recently there have been re-centralization processes. Whether re-centralization will be the new paradigm of European health policy or...

This paper aims at providing an economic analysis of the intergenerational social mobility in Italy. The data come from ISTAT. We present absolute mobility and social fluidity tables. We also examine the cohort effect, finding for Italy an increase in intergenerational absolute mobility, and a...

The long-term development of the social security system is a crucial policy issue in terms of both financial sustainability and adequacy, which constitute a difficult trade-off facing the policy maker. The particular complexity of this issue, also in the light of demographic dynamics and the...

So far the dynamics of income poverty in European countries has been analysed in a comparative perspective using the ECHP dataset, the first EU-scale panel survey ran from 1994 to 2001 in the “old” 15 member states. By means of the EU-SILC longitudinal data, the main purpose of this paper is...

This paper analyses the relationship between equality of opportunities and characteristics of the educational systems, jointly considering country- and school-level features. Because the peer group composition represents a fundamental channel in shaping educational opportunities, we consider all...

This paper analyses the interaction between school tracking policies and peer effects in OECD countries. Using the PISA 2006 dataset, we show that the linear peer effects are stronger and more concave-shaped in the early-tracking educational system than in the comprehensive one. Second, and more...