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The influence of religion on an individual’s life-course in general – and on sexual behaviour in particular – has long been recognised by social scientists, although few studies have explored the reciprocal causal interdependence between religiosity and sexual debut, mainly in an overwhelmingly Catholic European context. In this paper, we study the dynamic bi-directional effect between first coital experience and discontinuance of church attendance among a representative sample of Italian students. Both effects work, contrasting the results of other authors regarding the USA, where only the effect of religion on sex has been detected. The present results do not change when the two processes are considered simultaneously and unobserved heterogeneity is taken into account. Some possible explanations are discussed

While sexuality has radically changed across middle-high-income societies in recent years, only outdated studies are available for Italy. We aim to provide novel insights into the sexual behaviour and opinions of young Italians diachronically and through a gendered lens. Our analysis compares the results of two national samples of university students collected in 2000 and 2017. The sexual behaviour and opinions of young men and women seem to be converging in several respects. We observed a feminisation of male opinions and behaviour within couples, which is to say that men are more likely to experience first intercourse with a young woman of roughly the same age while in a stable relationship, and betray-or accept betrayal-with less frequency and willingness than in the past. Similarly, we found a masculinisation of female opinions and behaviour outside of stable relationships, for example, an increase in occasional partners, a net drop in the expectation that other women hold virgin status before marriage, and a doubling of the acceptance of casual sex. A few gender differences remain, especially concerning sexual double standards: young men and women are still subject to diverse rules guiding their sexual behaviour. Finally, acceptance of homosexuality has risen substantially-particularly among women.

As of 1 January 2000 the government of the northeastern Italian region of Friuli-Venezia Giulia (FVG) introduced a substantial bonus at birth. The birth bonus was differentiated by marital status (only married women were eligible), citizenship (only Italians were eligible), and birth order (the bonus grew for the second and especially the third birth). Moreover, the income threshold below which one got the bonus was fairly high. As of 1 January 2004 a new government substantially reduced the bonus amount as well as the upper income limit. We evaluate if the bonuses handed out in FVG during those four years (2000-03) had a significant impact on fertility and abortion choices, verifying whether fertility changed in a different way for women more affected by the new legislation. We also test if the impact of monetary measures was higher for less educated women, because in Italy the relationship between income and education is very strong, and the bonus was practically the same irrespective of income level, hence its relative impact should be stronger in a poorer family. We use two different methods: First, we compare the trends of births and abortion ratios, separately for women affected and not affected by the monetary measures, looking at the differential changes. Second, using log-linear models, we measure if the interactions among time, parity, marital status, citizenship and education are statistically significant in the direction that follows our expectations. Our results show that for low educated (and hence also less rich) women with one or (especially) two and more children, birth trends did change after 1999, whereas the trends for childless women living in FVG and for low-educated women living in other Italian regions did not change.

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