Conference Agenda

Rural depopulation poses significant challenges for remote and mountainous regions, driven by limited economic opportunities, inadequate infrastructure, and insufficient services. In response, the Autonomous Province of Trento launched the “Family Mark” certification, recognizing municipalities committed to family-oriented policies. These initiatives aim to enhance demographic sustainability by improving quality of life, increasing fertility intentions, and attracting residents.

This study evaluates the impact of the “Family Mark” certification on demographic trends in Trentino municipalities, focusing on birth rates and migration patterns. Using the Synthetic difference-in- differences (SDID) method, a counterfactual analysis compares treated municipalities with synthetic counterparts derived from a donor pool of untreated municipalities. The analysis incorporates municipality-level data from 1992 to 2022, accounting for structural factors like geography and baseline demographics.

Preliminary results suggest heterogeneous impacts of the policy, in particular, we do not find a significant effect on fertility outcomes, while there is a positive impact on migration. Planned future steps include testing model robustness, using alternative donor pool configurations, exploring impact heterogeneity, and estimating average treatment effects using advanced synthetic control techniques. This research provides evidence-based insights into family-oriented policy design, highlighting the potential of targeted interventions to address rural depopulation and promote sustainable development in challenging contexts.

Structural change and connected crises have induced policy-makers and scientists to widely acknowledge the importance of strengthening individuals’ resilience. But previous social science literature using the concept was criticized for ambivalent conceptualization and limited use for policy-driven change. We therefore aim at identifying the determinants of individuals’ resilience. Our theoretical framework conceptualizes resilience in terms of empirically testable life-course capitals, which are multi-dimensional, multi-level, and interacting – including individual’s economic, human, social, and “institutional” capital. Our empirical analysis employs multi-level models using longitudinal individual level data from 21,319 individuals in 23 European countries during the COVID-19 pandemic, enriched with country level data. We find that all life-course capital variables – lower economic arrears, savings, housing insecurity, education, health, social inclusion, public social expenditure, and government effectiveness – are positively associated with an individual’s resilience. Social inclusion and, less so, health are the relatively most important determinants. There is a tendency to substitution-effects between life-course capitals. Associations are rather stable across country-groups. An exception is Southern Europe, where social inclusion, education, and institutional capital enhance resilience more there. These results suggest a multi-dimensional policy-approach with key focus on social inclusion and public health, tailored to country-specific situations, can be promising.

Research on the effects of pronatalist policies has heretofore largely focused on policies of national scope, ignoring the proliferation of region-specific pronatalist measures within countries. Such an oversight is significant given that fertility rates within countries have tended to diverge over time. I examine the effects of sub-national pronatalist policies on fertility in the Russian Federation, where several regions have been implementing such programs since the early 2010s. I combine unique data on regional policies, age-order specific fertility rates, and region-level socioeconomic variables to assess the impact of regional pronatalist policies from 2010 to 2022. Using a difference-in-differences design, I evaluate whether these regional policies have affected fertility rates beyond the national policy in place since 2007, as well as the heterogeneity in the effects across regions.

Italy is characterised by persistent territorial demographic and socioeconomic disparities. These differences are found at the interregional level, especially between the north and the south, and at the intraregional level between urban and rural areas. However, one element common to the entire Italian context is the progressive ageing of population. Through an innovative approach based on gravitational models, this paper reflects on a crucial issue that links territory and ageing: the level of access to hospital facilities of the elderly population in three regional contexts, namely, Lombardy (north), Tuscany (centre) and Molise (south). The results show that spatial heterogeneities manifest as real inequalities in access to hospital facilities and help us understand their possible consequences. Local institutions need to remove barriers, including spatial ones, that lead to unequal access to health services and, consequently, to unequal levels of health under equal conditions for the resident population as stated in the Italian Constitution.