Conference Agenda

It is estimated that in 2023, 14% of the world population were residing within five kilometres of conflict or civil protest. Moreover, many conflict-affected regions, particularly in the Sahel, North Africa, and the Middle East, are situated in semi-arid or arid areas, where climatic shocks further exacerbate insecurities and fuel disputes over scarce resources. The combined impact of climate and conflict presents a compound risk disrupting livelihoods and well-being and can either spur or suppress migration depending on the intensity and individuals’ capacity to migrate. However, existing literature examining the joint influence of climate and conflict on migration remains limited. To address this gap, we analyse how exposure to conflict and climatic shocks shapes migration intentions exploiting the quasi-random variation in the local exposure to these events. Migration intentions data obtained from the Arab Barometer (2010-2022) and Gallup surveys (2008-2022) covering 15 countries in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) are matched with georeferenced information on climate extremes and conflict occurrence. The preliminary analysis show that migration intentions increase with conflict intensity and positive rainfall shocks. Furthermore, individuals exposed to both conflict and higher precipitation are more likely to report the intention to migrate abroad.

Housing conditions are widely recognized as a critical dimension of individual and household well-being. Increasing research is being done on the definition and measurement of this concept. In this study, we introduce a new multidimensional measure of housing insecurity, employing a counting approach. This method is widely used in various fields to create composite indicators. Our measure considers a set of dimensions assessing housing affordability and neighborhood quality. As an empirical application, we examine its relationship with subjective well-being among family types in Italy, for the period 1998-2016, drawing on data from the Bank of Italy’s Survey on Household Income and Wealth. Our preliminary results show two key findings. First, there is a negative, significant and sizeable relationship between housing insecurity and subjective well-being. Second, among family types, we find that housing insecurity seems to decrease subjective well-being for couples with children and for single parents.

The Index of Municipal Fragility (IFC) is a composite index that aims to identify the municipalities most exposed to risk factors and to facilitate the territorial analysis of the phenomenon, also through time series analyses. The IFC is the result of combining twelve elementary indicators that describe the main dimensions (territorial, environmental and socio-economic) of the fragility of municipal territories. The concept of municipal fragility is understood as the exposure of a territory to risks of natural and anthropic origin and to critical conditions linked to the main demo-social characteristics of the population and the economic-productive system.

The methodology used - the Adjusted Mazziotta and Pareto Index (AMPI) - was designed and implemented at Istat for the synthesis of elementary indicators and used in many contexts, including Equitable and Sustainable Wellbeing (BES). The IFC is calculated for the years 2018, 2019 and 2021 and the time series analysis shows an unexpected trend before and after COVID.

While there is evidence that the traditional negative educational gradient in fertility is still present, although reducing over time, in Spain, little is known about gradients in unrealized fertility. If more educated women tend to have lower fertility desires, they are also more likely to postpone childbearing, thus being at risk of not achieving their desired fertility. On the other hand, women with higher resources might be more able, despite a late entry into motherhood, to achieve their fertility goals.

We use data from the Spanish Fertility Survey 2018 to examine educational gradients in “unrealized fertility”, which we define as having less children than desired, or being involuntarily childless. Using, for the first time, data from the Basque Demographic Survey (1986-2021), we study how intended and realized fertility evolved over time. Our preliminary results show an overall positive educational gradient in unrealized fertility: highly educated women are more likely to have less children than desired. However, while highly educated women are more likely to be childless, they are not more likely to be involuntarily childless. For most cohorts, the fertility gap is slightly higher for highly educated women.

Women's reproductive rights, such as having the ability to access legal and safe abortion, are linked to improved women's reproductive health and socioeconomic well-being. Does different access to induced abortion have an impact on infant health? In this paper, we examine the impact of access to induced abortion (IA) on infant health. We leverage variation in IA across Spanish provinces, and we combine IA registers and birth certificates between 2011 and 2018. Preliminary results show that IA access – measured as IA rate – does not impact any birth outcome. Further analyses will extend the current study by exploring population heterogeneities and investigating abortion access as proximity to a public clinic, in addition to AI rate.