Subjective Job Insecurity During the COVID-19 Pandemic in Italy (original) (raw)

Scarring Effects of the COVID-19 Pandemic on the Italian Labour Market

SSRN Electronic Journal

Any opinions expressed in this paper are those of the author(s) and not those of IZA. Research published in this series may include views on policy, but IZA takes no institutional policy positions. The IZA research network is committed to the IZA Guiding Principles of Research Integrity. The IZA Institute of Labor Economics is an independent economic research institute that conducts research in labor economics and offers evidence-based policy advice on labor market issues. Supported by the Deutsche Post Foundation, IZA runs the world's largest network of economists, whose research aims to provide answers to the global labor market challenges of our time. Our key objective is to build bridges between academic research, policymakers and society. IZA Discussion Papers often represent preliminary work and are circulated to encourage discussion. Citation of such a paper should account for its provisional character. A revised version may be available directly from the author.

The Distribution of Economic Insecurity: Italy and the U.S. over the Great Recession

Review of Income and Wealth, 2013

We estimate the distribution of economic insecurity in Italy and the USA using data from 1994 to 2010. Economic insecurity for each individual is assumed to depend on both current wealth and the changes in wealth that have been experienced in the past. The first element plays the role of the buffer stock that can be relied on in the case of an adverse future event. The second element reflects the individual's confidence in his ability to overcome any losses in the future. With respect to this second element, experiences in the recent past are given greater weight than experiences that occurred in the more distant past. The results confirm that the great recession has had a dramatic effect on the distribution of economic insecurity in both countries with the effect being much stronger in the USA. Journal of Economic Literature Classification No.: D63.

The regional evolution of job insecurity during the first COVID-19 wave in relation to the pandemic intensity

Letters in Spatial and Resource Sciences

As the COVID-19 pandemic hit the European continent at the beginning of 2020, one of the most significant socioeconomic effects that immediately become the central focus of media and governing bodies was the unemployment and the sudden transformations suffered by the job market. This effect created major concerns for citizens and governing structures, as the pandemic generated a new and unparalleled economic context, where the short and medium-term future of several sectors seemed unpredictable. The concern acted upon the job insecurity of individuals, a perceived threat to the continuity and stability of their employment. Based on a self-reported survey covering the first pandemic wave, our study classifies the regions (NUTS2 level) from six EU countries according to their performance in terms of job insecurity, but also the shock intensity (death rates and case fatality ratio), and identifies the overall over and under performers. The results show that the regional evolution of the job insecurity could be linked to the pandemic evolution, especially in the stronger economies. However, the model does not follow a classic economic core-periphery pattern. The model is challenged especially by a stronger performance of several less performant regions from Italy,

More insecure and less paid. The effect of perceived job insecurity on wage distribution (Population Days 2019)

2019

This article employs a Counterfactual Decomposition Analysis (CDA) using both a semi-parametric and a non-parametric method to examine the pay gap due to perceived job insecurity over the entire wage distribution of dependent workforce in Italy. Using the 2015 INAPP Survey on Quality of Work, our results exhibit a mirror J-shaped pattern in the pay gap between secure and insecure workers, with a significant sticky floor effect, i.e. a greater effect of job insecurity at the lowest quantiles. This pattern is mainly due to the characteristics effect, while the relative incidence of the coefficient component accounts roughly for 22% up to 36% of the total difference, being more relevant at the bottom of the wage distribution.

The Impact of the Crisis on the Labour Market Situation of Households in Italy

Prekarisierung und soziale Entkopplung – transdisziplinäre Studien, 2020

Traditional individual employment and unemployment indicators don't allow to show different degrees of family disadvantage or risk of exclusion from the labour market, which may vary a lot considering the employment status of all household adult members. The presence of unemployed or inactive people and/or precarious jobs within the family can be faced differently if one or more components can still rely on a `guaranteed job´, while conversely redundancy of one of the member can cause more difficulties if others have a precarious job or are unemployed too. Using labour force data the article shows changes in the distribution of work in Italy at households level.

How Covid-19 changed economic and health-related worries in Italy

SN Business & Economics, 2022

The Covid-19 pandemic has been a huge challenge for governments all over the world, as well as for the World Health Organization (WHO) and the pharmaceutical companies in charge of creating the vaccines against the coronavirus. The success of all the efforts and the measures put in place to contain the spread of the contagion and to immunize people, however, also depends on people social compliance. In this study, we thus investigate how demographic and socioeconomic variables affected individuals' economic and health-related worries due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Using questions created by the WHO, we surveyed about 3000 Italians between May and June 2020. Our results show that individuals' socio-demographic and socioeconomic characteristics are engaged with distinct types of worries due to Covid-19, such as health-related worries, economic-related worries and worries connected to restrictions on movements. Our findings have implications for decision makers and policy makers in showing how important is to consider demographic and socioeconomic differences between individuals, to better understand how people are differently affected by different worries and which actions and policies may be more effective in protecting and supporting people especially the most vulnerable ones.

Welfare resilience in the first month of COVID-19 pandemic in Italy

2020

This paper analyses the extent to which the Italian welfare system provides a monetary compensation for those who lost their earnings due to the lockdown imposed by the government in order to contain the COVID-19 pandemic in March 2020. In order to assess the potential impact of the first-order effects of the businesses temporarily shut down and the policy measures introduced by the government on household income, counterfactual scenarios are simulated by using EUROMOD, the EU-wide microsimulation model, integrated with information on the workers more likely to be affected by the lockdown. This paper provides timely evidence on the differing degrees of relative and absolute resilience of the household incomes of the individuals affected by the lockdown. These arise from the variations in the protection offered by the tax-benefit system and from the personal and household circumstances of those most recently at risk of earning losses.

Did COVID-19 Affect the Division of Labor within the Household? Evidence from Two Waves of the Pandemic in Italy

Social Science Research Network, 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a dramatic impact on families' lives, with parents all over the world struggling to meet the increased demands of housework, childcare and homeschooling. Much of the additional burden has been shouldered by women, particularly in countries with a traditionally uneven division of household labor. Yet the dramatic increase in remote work from home since the pandemic also has the potential to increase paternal involvement in family life and thus to redress persistent domestic gender role inequalities. This effect depends on the working arrangements of each partner, whether working remotely, working at their usual workplace or ceasing work altogether. We examine the role of working arrangements during the pandemic on the traditional division of household labor in Italy using survey data from interviews with a representative sample of working women conducted during the two waves of COVID-19 (April and November 2020). Our data show that the gender gap in household care related activities was widest during the first wave of the pandemic, and although it was less pronounced during the second wave, it was still higher than pre-COVID-19. The time spent by women on housework, childcare, and assisting their children with distance learning did not depend on their partners' working arrangements. Conversely, men spent fewer hours helping with the housework and distance learning when their partners were at home. It is interesting, however, that although men who worked remotely or not at all did devote more time to domestic chores and child care, the increased time they spent at home did not seem to lead to a reallocation of couples' roles in housework and child care. Finally, we find that working arrangements are linked to women's feelings of uncertainty, with heterogeneous effects by level of education.

Economic expectations and anxiety during the COVID-19 pandemic: a one-year longitudinal evaluation on Italian university students

Quality & Quantity, 2022

The COVID-19 pandemic has produced an extensive aggravation of people’s anxiety level. Different policies aimed at fighting the spread of the virus could affect anxiety in various ways. We built an ad hoc web-based survey, administered to the student population of three Italian universities at the beginning of the pandemic and at one year’s distance, to collect information on retrospective and current anxiety levels and the underlining reasons. The survey also included questions concerning sociodemographic, economic, labor, lifestyle, academic career, and on-line teaching features, which prevents students from identifying the main survey topic to be anxiety. This research aims at assessing the change in anxiety levels between the analyzed periods and the main determinants of such change, focusing on students’ economic expectancies. Results from a Poisson regression model show that anxiety has increased compared to both the pre-pandemic level and the one quantified during the first l...

Fear of COVID‐19 contagion and consumption: Evidence from a survey of Italian households

Health Economics, 2021

Using a new survey of Italian households, we study the effect of fear of COVID‐19 contagion and income risk on consumption. The survey elicits individual‐level indicators of fear of contagion, distinguishing between worries while working, shopping, traveling, eating out and meeting relatives or friends. We find that the probabilities of consumption drops and increased saving after the pandemics are positively associated to fear of contagion, particularly while shopping. Income uncertainty also contributes to savings increase and consumption drop. Our findings suggest that fear of contagion and income risk limits the effectiveness of policies aimed at stimulating consumption during the pandemic.