No abstract

No abstract

No abstract

This paper analyses how unstable employment influences becoming a mother in Italy and Spain. Results suggest that institutional factors foster dynamics of social inequality and hinder family formation. We show that in southern Europe (Italy and Spain), but not in other institutional contexts, the lack of employment stability produces a delay in fertility decision. We attribute this impact of the employment situation on demographic decisions to the subprotective southern European welfare systems and the insider-outsider labour market configuration, as enhanced by the partial and targeted labour market deregulations of recent decades. In the context of low levels of welfare, unstable employment often comes with persistently reduced entitlement to social and welfare rights, and, therefore, with notable social and demographic consequences. We provide support for this institutional argument by showing that fertility decisions are independent of employment stability in other contexts. Analyses are based on longitudinal data using event history analysis and simultaneous equation models.

This article deals with families' risk of entering poverty as a consequence of childbirth in four European Union (EU) welfare clusters. Poverty risks around childbirth are institutionally stratified according to specific characteristics of national welfare systems and the value they assign to family policies as well as the kind of labour market deregulation. While southern European countries are known for having welfare systems that make few provisions for 'the future generations of citizens', conservative and social-democratic countries differ significantly in the amount of their investments in family policies. We compare households' risks of entering poverty at childbirth between Southern Europe and the rest of Europe using pooled longitudinal European Union Statistics on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) data and applying panel models and propensity score matching. We show that childbirth is very poverty inducing only in southern Europe, especially for the less 'labour market-attached' households (precarious worker families, the unemployed) and traditional single-earner families, thereby pointing out the under-protectiveness of the Southern European systems of family and social policies. This situation is exacerbating additional inequality as families' well-being largely depends on the previous unequal social stratification of resources.