Conference Agenda

Despite the grand gender convergence, women continue to experience strong employment and income losses after the birth of children. The persistence of this “child penalty” remains a puzzle. We explore this puzzle by studying variation in child related career costs across fields of study. The field of study is highly gendered and directly impacts economic opportunities. In keeping with this, study fields figure centrally in the interplay between family and gender earnings gaps. Exploiting Finnish register data, we use an event study approach and compare men and women’s outcomes prior to and after childbirth (N=665,532). We find that women’s earned income and total taxable income drops after childbirth, while men do not experience a commensurate decrease. Strikingly, women also face large employment decreases in Finland, which runs counter to patterns observed in other Nordic countries. Moreover, women in engineering–a male-dominated field–experience particularly large career costs.

The COVID-19 pandemic saw a marked rise in the incidence of working from home (WFH), stimulating interest in whether this work arrangement is beneficial or detrimental to workers. Whereas several studies have associated WFH with longer working hours and overtime, little is known regarding how home workers perceive their working hours, and especially, to what extent their actual working hours correspond with their preferences. Using 23 waves of panel data from the Australian HILDA Survey covering the period 2001 to 2023, we investigate the association between the extent of WFH and two types of working time mismatch: underemployment (i.e., the desire to work more hours) and overemployment (i.e., the desire to work fewer hours). Furthermore, we consider the moderating roles of gender, parental status and the COVID-19 pandemic. Results from fixed effects logistic regression models suggest that for both genders small shares of time worked from home are associated with an increased likelihood of overemployment compared to not WFH, whereas large shares of WFH are associated with an increased likelihood of underemployment. Overall, only mothers benefit from WFH in terms of a better working time match, and only when they work from home extensively.

Single mothers face significant disadvantages in labor market participation compared to partnered mothers. This study investigates employment gaps between single and partnered mothers across European countries, distinguishing between full-time and part-time work. It also examines how reconciliation policies, such as professional childcare services and parental leave, influence these gaps and explores the reasons behind the non-use of such services, distinguishing between constraints and personal preferences.

The analysis uses data from the 2018 wave of the European Union Labour Force Survey (EU-LFS), focusing on native, low-educated mothers, as they are more likely to encounter employment challenges. A multinomial logistic regression model is applied to study employment gaps and the effect of reconciliation policies.

Results confirm that single mothers are generally disadvantaged in employment compared to partnered mothers, though exceptions exist in some Southern European countries, where financial pressure drives higher employment rates among single mothers. Reconciliation policies help reduce employment gaps and, in some cases, favor single mothers. However, access to these policies is uneven, with single mothers in Southern Europe particularly disadvantaged due to limited availability and support.

This study provides a comparative perspective on maternal employment, highlighting the role of reconciliation policies and barriers to their accessibility across Europe.

Immigration has been a prominent topic of debate in Italian media and political discourse, becoming a significant structural element of Italian society and the economy. Over the past two decades, there has been a notable increase in the number of foreign residents in Italy. In 2023, there were over 2.3 million foreign citizens employed in Italy, representing about 10% of the total labour force (almost 23 million). The integration of these individuals into the Italian labour market presents a number of challenges and opportunities, taking into account the country's demographic evolution, economic needs and the demand for labour in a number of economic sectors.This study employs a novel demographic tool, Lexis Surfaces, to examine the Italian labour market, with a particular focus on the participation of foreign workers. This demographic approach, which is commonly employed in the study of mortality, enables the simultaneous capture of the effects of age, period and cohort on the phenomenon under examination, facilitating an in-depth analysis of the potential interactions between these factors. The innovative contribution lies in the application of the Age-Period-Cohort model to an economic-social phenomenon such as the labour market, providing an alternative and potentially more comprehensive key to interpretation than more traditional approaches.