Conference Agenda

The fear that machines will take away jobs has been prevalent since at least the first Industrial Revolution. In the twenty-first century, a new wave of anxiety has emerged, driven by advances in technologies such as industrial robots. While the impact of robots on employment and wages has gained scholarly attention, the effect on workers’ subjective well-being has not been examined. This study aims to address this gap. We construct a measure of robot density at the country-industry level by year, using data from the International Federation of Robotics and Eurostat. This data is then linked to the pooled 2002–2018 waves of the European Social Survey. Workers’ subjective life satisfaction and happiness are used as the primary measures of well-being. To account for external shocks that may simultaneously affect workers' well-being and robot adoption, we estimate linear models with instrumental variables. Consistent with the polarization hypothesis, we find that the well-being of medium-educated workers is negatively impacted by robot adoption. Conversely, robots positively affect the life satisfaction and happiness of both low- and highly-educated workers. These effects are less pronounced in countries with relatively stronger welfare states (e.g., Continental and Scandinavian countries) and are primarily driven by women.

This study investigates the role of criminal justice deterrence practices, i.e., opioid arrests, in effectively deterring opioid overdoses, paying particular attention to whether arrests in spatially proximate or socially connected communities lead to the diffusion or deterrence of opioid overdoses in a local community. Combining data from the Cook County medical examiner, emergency medical services information, and arrest reports with commuting statistics for Chicago’s 77 community areas between 2016 and 2019, this study uses fixed effects spatial autoregressive models with spatial lags to predict community-level opioid overdose rates. We find evidence for the displacement of crime as well as the diffusion of crime benefits. Findings suggest complex spatial and social spillover mechanisms of displacement and deterrence, dependent on the crime and overdose rate investigated. These results have important implications for understanding the effectiveness of criminal justice policies in deterring opioid misuse.

Population ageing poses profound challenges for health and social care systems. While much research has addressed the economic and demographic implications of ageing, in particular the ability of societies to meet increasing demands, less attention has been paid to unmet social care needs. Most of the literature has focused on the growing demand for care, without considering the different types of care people need. As a result, unmet care needs remain under investigated. This study provides a comprehensive analysis of the unmet social care needs of adults aged 50 and over in Spain, using data from the 2020 Spanish Survey on Disability, Personal Autonomy and Dependency (EDAD). Care needs related to mobility, basic and instrumental activities of daily living (ADLs and IADLs), sensory, communication and learning disabilities are examined. Unmet care needs are quantified using two approaches: an absolute measure, which identifies individuals who did not receive assistance despite needing it, and a relative measure, which identifies those whose assistance received was inadequate. Binomial regression models are used to explore how socio-demographic, economic and care availability factors influence unmet need. The results of the study highlight the importance of addressing unmet care needs to improve the wellbeing of older adults.

Previous research has shown that specific patterns of work and family trajectories over the life course are associated with later-life health. Here, we delve into the study of housing tenure trajectories as potential determinants of later-life health.

Using 2017 SHARELIFE data, we explore how housing tenure trajectories (age 16-65) are associated with later-life health among 65-75 years-old adults in eleven European countries. We use sequence and cluster analysis to identify main patterns of housing tenure trajectories and logistic regression to explore their association with self-rated health, chronic morbidity, and activity limitations (GALI). Six main patterns emerged: ‘Early homeowners’ (62.4% men vs 57.5% women), ‘Late homeowners’ (7.7% vs 11%), ‘Never leavers’ (11.5% vs 7.3%), ‘Private tenants’ (8.5% vs 12.5%), ‘Social tenants’ (6.7% vs 7.7%), and ‘Rent-free and other’ (3.1% vs 3.9%). All non-standard housing tenure trajectories patterns – especially social tenants, private tenants, and never leavers – are associated with poorer health compared to the standard pattern of early homeowners, especially among women. We find weak evidence for variation of the association across country groups.

To summarize, trajectories characterized by early transition and stability in homeownership are associated with a health advantage, consistently across Europe and more clearly among women.

This study focuses on sustainable attitudes and behaviors among Italian high school adolescents, aiming to identify profiles of individuals with a greater propensity for pro-environmental actions and assess the influential factors. By conducting a randomized survey experiment in 2022, this article investigates the importance that Italian adolescents attach to reducing consumption in areas such as meat, water, and fast-fashion clothes. Additionally, the study explores whether adolescents were more responsive to socio/environmental arguments or individual/economic ones and examined how this responsiveness varied based on specific individual attitudes. Through an Ordered Logit Model, the results demonstrate that information treatments generally had a positive effect on students' beliefs about pro-environmental behaviors. However, these effects varied across different individual profiles, revealing the need for targeted information awareness campaigns. The study provides insights into the attitudes and behaviors of high school students in Italy, a crucial demographic as they represent the future of society. The findings of the study reveal a positive association between the treatments and different outcomes in the majority of cases. The socio-environmental treatment consistently proves to be at least as effective, if not more so, than the individual-economic treatment in improving adolescents' willingness to adopt pro-environmental behaviors.