Title:
Labour market changes and the transitions to first marriage and to first childbirth in Italy. A comparison between generations.

Abstract:
This paper studies changes in the timing of marriage and first childbirth between post- WWII Italian generations. In particular, it analyses how macro-level changes, such as processes of regulation and de-regulation of the Italian labour market and their effects on the individual work trajectories, affect the time of transition to parental roles. Standing at the core of this paper is the idea that, given the characteristics of the subprotective Italian welfare and the insider scenario boomed by the 80s-90s partial and targeted labour market deregulation, to be a young and instable worker or, more generally, a marginal or secondary labour market participant produces a delay in the transition to adulthood particularly for what a delay in marriage and childbirth for the last cohorts of the Italian population are concerned. This question becomes even more central if we consider that non-standard or unstable work experiences as traps from which is hard to escape while hampering the transition into better employment conditions – which, in the context of an insurance-based welfare, directly translate in social rights. The negative effects of these processes regard mainly youngest cohorts, approximately individuals born from the second half of the Sixties on. In particular, individuals poorly endowed with personal and familiar resources are those who experiment this situation to a greater extent, enhancing in this way the role of the well known factors affecting social inequality. These people, “disembedded” from the “fordist” welfare guarantees, do not manage to catch the opportunities offered by the new “flexible” labour market and post-fordist productive environment. The analysis will be conducted on ILFI (Longitudinal Survey of Italian Families), a prospective panel survey that includes retrospective information on education, work career and family dynamics. As regards to methods, duration EHA models are employed. Results show how the combination of the mentioned institutional factors produces additional risks of social exclusion that are strongly cohorts-biased and that are adding to the pre-existing structural factors of social stratification and inequality.