In the past decade, several countries, notably France, Spain and Germany, have experienced a joint increase in female participation and fertility, mainly because of national policies aimed at balancing work and family life. In Italy, by contrast, fertility has remained relatively stable (after a...

Microlevel individual data for Italy from the Quarterly Labour Force Survey (Rilevazione Trimestrale delle Forze di Lavoro) are used to undertake a microeconometric analysis of the factors affecting women’s labour force participation. The main research questions are: 1) does the availability...

Turkish economic growth has been characterized by periodic crises since financial liberalization reforms were enacted in the early 1990s. Given the phenomenally low female labor force participation rate in Turkey (one of the lowest in the world) and the limited scope of the country's...

The international literature on non-standard employment has mostly focussed on its impact on employment, and more recently on working and living conditions. This volume explores these issues with special reference to Italy. Italy is characterized by very low participation rates (particularly...

Contrary to consolidated economic theory principles, in Europe (but also in other world regions), austerity policy has been implemented instead of stimulus measures which have proven to be successful in crisis associated with credit crunch and insufficient demand. These policies cannot be only...

The paper investigates whether self-employment, which generally offers greater flexibility with respect to the hours and place of work, is chosen by women in order to achieve a better balance between paid work and family. The empirical research on this topic has provided conflicting evidence....

Using a differences-in-differences approach and controlling for individual unobserved heterogeneity, we evaluate the impact of a 1999 law that granted all workers with children younger than 7 years old protection against a layoff if the worker had previously asked for a work-week reduction due...

Married women's labor force participation (LFP) increased dramatically in the United States between the 1940 and 1960 cohort. The two cohorts lived under different divorce regimes (unilateral divorce rather than mutual consent). The 1960 cohort also had a lower gender wage gap. We use a...

Using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we provide evidence that to understand household decisions and evaluate policies designed to affect individual welfare, it is important to add an intertemporal dimension to the by-now standard static collective models of the household. Specifically, we...

The presented analysis discovers and explains typical patterns of work-family reconciliation for parents who had a child in the same period 2003 and in the same country Luxembourg, thus facing the same macroeconomic and institutional conditions. Work-family trajectories are reconstructed as...