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Afterword: The Impact of the COVID-19 Epidemic
- Chiara Saraceno, David Benassi, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Enrica Morlicchio, Università degli Studi di Napoli 'Federico II'
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- 02 September 2020, pp 146-150
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Summary
At the time we were revising the proofs of this book, Italy suddenly became one of the countries most hit by Coronavirus (COVID-19). On 9 March 2020, Italian Prime Minister Giuseppe Conte signed a decree implementing a complete lockdown aimed at ‘avoiding any movement of individuals’. Only a small number of ‘essential activities’ remained open: health services, of course, and food stores, as well as the industrial, agricultural and logistic activities linked to these two sectors. Where possible, working at a social distance was implemented. Where this was not possible, workers were covered by the WGF, which was also extended to people working in small firms and sectors that previously not had such protection. But, given the large amount of very small firms and of self-employed people in Italy, as well as the large numbers of seasonal or temporary workers in tourism and cultural activities, many had neither work nor income protection. Many small enterprises risk not being able to re-open their shops, for example, and those formerly employed in them are facing difficulties in finding work as the lockdown is gradually being lifted – non-food shops, restaurants, cafes, cultural venues, tourism, sports, together with schools and childcare and education services will be the last to be reopened. Tourism in particular, which accounts for 13.2 per cent of GNP in Italy and 14.9 per cent of total employment, will likely continue to suffer the effects of COVID-19 throughout the whole of 2020 and possibly into 2021.
At the time of writing (May 2020), the forecasts from the main financial institutions are very negative for Italy, with a decrease of GDP estimated at 9.1 per cent in 2020, the largest in the developed world, and an increase of unemployment by 12.7 per cent (IMF, World Economic Outlook, April 2020). These data should be read against the fact that Italy entered this crisis not having fully recovered – in GNP and employment levels – from the financial 2008 crisis, and saddled with an already high public debt, which has reduced public spending, notwithstanding the temporary lifting of the EU fiscal budget requirements.
COVID-19 will therefore have remarkable short- and medium-term economic and social consequences for Italy, not to mention the thousands of people who have died, half of them concentrated in the most industrialised region of Italy, Lombardy.
8 - Continuities and Changes in the Italian Poverty Regime
- Chiara Saraceno, David Benassi, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Enrica Morlicchio, Università degli Studi di Napoli 'Federico II'
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Summary
A country ill prepared to face the economic crisis and its Duration
In Italy, the 2008 economic crisis and ensuing Great Recession hit a country that had already experienced a long period (since the currency crisis in 1992) of sluggish growth, marked by the difficulty of the Italian productive system in modernising in the face of deepening European unification, the growing integration of global markets and the spread of new technologies (OECD, 2012; Figari and Fiorio, 2015). Households’ real incomes, which had seen a constant increase in the previous decades, had stopped growing (Ciocca, 2007; Brandolini and Vecchi, 2013). Wages were, and still are, among the lowest in Europe. According to the European Commission's AMECO database, the GDP wage share, currently 59.4%, was always around 60%, also prior to 2008; it was only lower in Greece and Cyprus. The currency crisis had also inverted the trend towards decreasing income inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient. A study by Brandolini et al (2018) shows that the double recession − due to the global financial crisis in 2008−09 and the sovereign debt crisis in 2011−13 − did not cause a further increase in income inequality as measured by the Gini coefficient, but rather, general impoverishment. Households’ incomes, in fact, fared even worse than GDP, sliding back to the values of the late 1980s.
The 1992 economic crisis, and the need to adhere to the stringent Maastricht requirements, had also constrained the process of welfare recalibration that had slowly begun (Ferrera et al, 2000; Saraceno, 2017; Negri and Saraceno, 2018), leaving untouched the existing patchy system of social protection and its lack of a national minimum income for the poor: income and unemployment protection skewed towards old and core (mostly male) workers; unbalanced division of solidaristic responsibilities between the family, the state, local governments, the Catholic and other churches, NGOs and charities, depending on who needed protection (core workers with long-term contracts, temporary, mostly young workers, long-term unemployed, disabled people and the frail old, homeless people, recent and less recent migrants); and the historical weakness of social assistance.
2 - Poverty Regimes and the Great Recession
- Chiara Saraceno, David Benassi, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Enrica Morlicchio, Università degli Studi di Napoli 'Federico II'
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Summary
Comparing poverty levels: a methodological caveat
Looking at cross-national differences in poverty incidence and trends clearly involves amply debated theoretical and methodological issues (see, for example, Atkinson, 1998; Brandolini, 2007; Goedemé et al, 2019). Some of these issues – such as the individuation of the threshold, the use of objective or subjective, relative (contemporary or anchored) or absolute poverty lines, drawing on consumption or income data, the choice of equivalence scale and therefore assumptions concerning economies of scale – are the same one has to face when assessing income poverty at the national level. But some are specific to cross-country comparisons. This applies to the reference threshold (national or cross-national?) and the comparability, in terms of purchasing power, of similar income levels or similar percentages of national income levels. The US$1.90 a day threshold (an absolute measure) used by the World Bank does not have a similar value even in the world's poorest countries. A poverty line of 50% or 60% of national income – the standard measure used in the EU − may mean a quite different level of living in different countries. It does not always indicate a similar or comparable situation in terms of poverty, and may even offer a distorted view of the distribution of poverty across countries. As Goedemé et al (2019) suggest, the picture of the distribution of poverty may differ depending on whether one uses the standard EU at-risk-of-poverty (AROP) indicator, which sets the poverty line at 60% of the national median equivalent disposable household income, or whether one contextualises it in terms of purchasing power standards (PPS), as suggested by Atkinson et al (2002).
Figure 2.1 shows clearly, for instance, that although the percentage of the AROP population in Hungary is on a similar level to that in Belgium and Sweden, the purchasing power of those below the poverty line in Hungary is much lower. Households living on the poverty line in Belgium can afford over 2.5 times more goods and services than similar households in Hungary. Italy and Poland have about the same AROP levels, but Italians living on the poverty line can afford about 50% more goods than the Polish households. The Luxembourg poverty threshold in PPS is over two times higher than that in Estonia, which is the country with the lowest AROP in 2018.
Notes
- Chiara Saraceno, David Benassi, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Enrica Morlicchio, Università degli Studi di Napoli 'Federico II'
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6 - Urban Poverty in Italy
- Chiara Saraceno, David Benassi, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Enrica Morlicchio, Università degli Studi di Napoli 'Federico II'
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Summary
Local poverty systems in Italy
Chapters 1, 3 and 4 dealt in detail with the social roots and characteristics of the Italian poverty regime. Within these general characteristics, however, poverty also manifests in specific features related to local dynamics and factors shaped by geography, sociodemographic trends and balances, local economies and their relationship with the national and international context, locally specific distribution and functioning of national welfare measures, and the latter's interplay with the respective local measures (Mingione et al, 2002; Sgritta, 2010a, b). This is true in every context, but particularly so in a country like Italy, which is historically characterised by extensive territorial differentiation in many crucial respects: economic functioning, administrative capacity and political cultures. The factors that characterise the Italian poverty regime – a comparatively strong gender division of labour, forced familialism, labour market segmentation, insider/outsider dualism, fragmented welfare policies, and the importance of charities and NGOs (see Chapters 1 and 7) – therefore have a different intensity and a diversified impact across the country.
The existence of internal geographical differentiation has been a fundamental issue in the Italian sociological debate. In addition to the studies focusing on the Italian Mezzogiorno (mentioned in Chapters 2, 3 and 4), reference must also be made to another strand of literature that offers a less dichotomous view of Italian society and the Italian economy. This literature shows how the interplay between demographic, cultural, political and economic contexts may create specific social formations that are more or less favourable not only to economic development in general, but also to variations in the patterns it may take. Adopting this perspective, the well-known study by Bagnasco (1977) on the ‘Three Italies’ described how Italy could be understood not only in terms of a North/South divide in that there was also a third Italy, identified in the North-Eastern and Central regions, which differed both from the industrialised North-West based on large enterprises and from the undeveloped South. In this ‘third Italy’, a particular historical combination of strongly embedded homogeneous political cultures (Christian Democratic in the North-East, and Socialist and Communist in the Centre, including the Emilia-Romagna region) allowed the development and continuity of local administrative capacities and investments, and of family-run small enterprises, giving rise to what were called ‘diffuse industrial districts’.
7 - A Late and Uncertain Comer in Developing Anti-Poverty Policies
- Chiara Saraceno, David Benassi, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Enrica Morlicchio, Università degli Studi di Napoli 'Federico II'
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Main features of anti-poverty policies in Italy
Until the very recent introduction of a national and tendentially universalistic minimum income benefit in 2017 and 2019, the public policy approach to poverty in Italy was historically weak, fragmented and indirect (Negri and Saraceno, 1996; Benassi, 2000; Kazepov, 2015). As discussed in previous chapters, the comparatively limited role of the state in the fight against poverty is explained by a combination of other factors that characterise the Italian social model: the pivotal role of family solidarity also beyond household boundaries; a social security system that is highly categorical and strongly skewed towards benefits based on contributions, above all pensions (Ferrera, 1996, 2010; Rhodes, 1996; Bonoli, 1997; Ascoli and Pavolini, 2015; Saraceno, 2017); and the delegation of social assistance to local governments (Kazepov, 2009, 2011) and charities.
Overall, as Figure 7.1 shows, although the size of the social budget is at the EU average, the state in Italy – and in Spain – plays a limited role in protection against all typical social risks, except for old age, widowhood and loss of the parent who was the main breadwinner. Ferrera (2006; Ferrera et al, 2012) uses the term ‘functional distortion’ to describe this phenomenon of a strong incidence of pensions in the overall social budget, leaving other social risks and needs much less covered. In the case of family or children, the per capita state expenditure in Italy (in PPS) is only €486 compared to more than €1,000 in Germany and Sweden, and close to €800 in France and the UK. Per capita housing expenditure amounts to barely €10, compared to an EU28 average of €159 (with a peak of €375 in the UK). Finally, the per capita expenditure for social exclusion in 2016 was €71 in Italy, compared to €472 in Sweden, €310 in France and €180 in the UK.
Given this distribution of social expenditure, the weak efficacy of the social transfer system in reducing poverty comes as no surprise. It is also a feature that Italy shares with other Mediterranean countries (see Figure 7.2). While in Greece the onset of the economic crisis meant that the efficacy of its social expenditure actually improved, albeit remaining at comparatively low levels, and in Spain the substantial improvement in the first period was followed by a sharp downturn, in Italy there was only a small improvement in efficacy following the crisis, which then stalled afterwards.
References
- Chiara Saraceno, David Benassi, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Enrica Morlicchio, Università degli Studi di Napoli 'Federico II'
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List of Figures, Tables and Maps
- Chiara Saraceno, David Benassi, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Enrica Morlicchio, Università degli Studi di Napoli 'Federico II'
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Contents
- Chiara Saraceno, David Benassi, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Enrica Morlicchio, Università degli Studi di Napoli 'Federico II'
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4 - Long-term Trends Since the Early 1990s
- Chiara Saraceno, David Benassi, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Enrica Morlicchio, Università degli Studi di Napoli 'Federico II'
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Summary
The 1992 crisis as a turning point
The turning point in the long post-war downward trend of the incidence of poverty was the devaluation of the Italian lira in 1992 and Italy's exit from the European Monetary System following speculative attacks. The public debt had jumped to 95.2% in 1990, almost tripling its weight in 20 years. This development brought about the 1992 crisis of the Italian lira, which was the first signal that the era of growth had stopped. From then on, the growth of the Italian economy was at best characterised as sluggish, increasingly exposing a structural weakness that rendered it particularly vulnerable to the global financial crisis of 2008−09, followed by the 2011 sovereign debt crisis in 2011−13 (Brandolini et al, 2018). The devaluation of the lira had a negative impact on employment rates and wage levels. The latter decreased faster than inflation thanks to the agreement signed between the government and trade unions cancelling any automatic alignment of wages to inflation (the so-called scala mobile), which had already been partly curtailed in 1984. In addition, the income distribution changed unfavourably for waged workers. The GDP share of wages declined by 5%, a sharper decrease than in other European countries at that time. Last but not least, a strong austerity policy was implemented, comprising radical cuts in public expenditure and increases in taxation (Sbarile, 2018).
Starting the following year, both relative poverty and absolute poverty began to increase (Commissione di Indagine, 1996; Amendola et al, 2011a). In particular, absolute poverty doubled in the South and almost tripled in the Centre-North (Amendola et al, 2011a: 310). During the following decade, the gradual recovery caused an − albeit slow − decrease in relative poverty in the North and Centre, but it did not improve the situation of the South, where poverty remained stable and high − at levels (around 15%) that the North had experienced over 30 years previously. In fact, the gap in the at-risk-of-poverty experience between those living in the South and those living in the North has more than doubled since 1961, with the increase becoming steeper in the last few decades.
Preface
- Chiara Saraceno, David Benassi, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Enrica Morlicchio, Università degli Studi di Napoli 'Federico II'
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Summary
Italy is one of the European Union (EU) countries hit hardest by the 2008 financial crisis and it is also the slowest in recovering, even compared to other Mediterranean countries that share some of its societal features. Poverty has steadily increased throughout the period following 2008, and no indication of a trend reversal was yet visible when, in late February 2020, coronavirus (COVID-19) hit the country with unexpected violence. The dramatic sudden increase in poverty caused by the lockdown of most activities, therefore, occurred in a country that had not yet recovered from the 2008 financial crisis.
This book presents the argument that the duration and depth of the crisis in Italy, and its impact on poverty, are largely a consequence of the long-term structural features of the Italian economy and its social safety net, which government choices, in reaction to the crisis (and under pressure from the EU), have further strengthened.
Long before the global downturn, within a persistent North/South divide in Italy, the national economy was struggling with protracted sluggish growth. The traditional duality of the labour market, with its substantial informal and grey economies, had also developed into a duality within the formal sector with the introduction since the 1990s of new, more flexible and precarious labour contracts. These were (and largely still are) concentrated among the young, whose entry to and stabilisation in the labour market has become increasingly delayed and insecure. Finally, women's labour force participation has remained systematically low, particularly in the South and among the less educated. The steady increase initiated in the 1990s, in fact, proceeded at a much slower pace than in other countries, such as Spain, which had a similar or even lower starting point, at the same time widening intra-country cross-educational and cross-regional differences, with a gap of over 20 points in women's employment between the Centre-North and the South. Single-earner households are therefore quite widespread in Italy, particularly when children are present, but particularly so among the lower-educated and in the South. Together with jobless households, which are also more present in the South, these households are the most at risk of poverty. The phenomenon of the working-poor, in fact, although it increased with the financial crisis, is far from a novelty in Italy.
1 - A Regime Approach
- Chiara Saraceno, David Benassi, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Enrica Morlicchio, Università degli Studi di Napoli 'Federico II'
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Summary
Introduction
Poverty is the outcome of modes of regulation of social processes that, on the one hand, shape the system of opportunities and disadvantages, and on the other, construct some social groups as disadvantaged. As summed up by Brady (2006: 154), ‘macro-level labour market and demographic conditions put people at risk of poverty…. Structural theory is a compositional type of explanation: the more people in vulnerable demographic or labour market circumstances, the more poverty there is. The concept of structure refers to the set of labour market opportunities and/or demographic propensities that characterize the population's likelihood of being poor.’ These modes of regulation are rooted in the specific history of a country, although they have adapted to the changing circumstances. They involve economic processes, but also forms of family and social solidarity, systems of social protection, and cultural norms and representations.
This is what is meant here by the concept of poverty regime: a specific combination of labour market conditions, the balance between public and private (family) responsibility in buffering against social risks, a gender division of labour within families and within society, and (gendered) social norms and cultural values. The incidence of poverty, its composition and how it is experienced by those concerned depend on the peculiar combination and interaction of these factors in a given context and in a given historical period.
In societies characterised by different balances of regulative institutions, the sub-groups mostly affected by the risk of impoverishment may differ. For instance, in 2017, the risk of poverty was 20.3% in Italy and 12.4% in Denmark. However, in the case of families with three or more children, the difference was much greater: 37.1% in Italy and 8.9% in Denmark (Eurostat online database). Generally in Italy, households with dependent children have a higher risk of poverty than childless households (24.8% against 16.2%), while in Denmark the reverse is true (8.3% against 15.9%). In Denmark, the highest risk of poverty (33.4%) concerns adults aged under 65 who live alone, a figure that amounts to ‘only’ 25.9% in Italy.
Frontmatter
- Chiara Saraceno, David Benassi, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Enrica Morlicchio, Università degli Studi di Napoli 'Federico II'
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Index
- Chiara Saraceno, David Benassi, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Enrica Morlicchio, Università degli Studi di Napoli 'Federico II'
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5 - Working-poor, Children and Migrants: Italy’s ‘New Poor’
- Chiara Saraceno, David Benassi, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Enrica Morlicchio, Università degli Studi di Napoli 'Federico II'
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- Poverty in Italy
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Summary
Introduction
The discussion in this chapter will focus on the three, partly overlapping, social groups that were affected most by the crisis: the working-poor, children and migrants. These groups also epitomise the characteristics of the Italian poverty regime: insufficient labour demand in an increasingly weak economy and in a globalised world, a high incidence of low wages in a context of decreasing trade union power, a persistently strong gender division in paid and unpaid work within the household (underpinned by scarce work−family reconciliation policies), low levels of defamilialisation through public policies, and an overall fragmented welfare state that often leaves precisely the poorest unprotected or only barely protected. These characteristics are present throughout Italy, but are particularly concentrated in the South.
The first two social groups in focus – the working-poor and underage children – were already over-represented among the poor before the 2008 economic crisis set in, and were also the worst affected. The third group, migrants, are a new entry because Italy only became an immigration country comparatively late, and migrants, and more generally foreigners, did not appear in national statistics on household consumption or income and wealth until very recently, de facto almost coincidentally with the onset of the crisis. For this reason, data on the impact of the crisis are more robust for the first two groups than for the third.
The three groups partly overlap, but they do not entirely coincide. The working-poor are often, but not always, foreign workers. The large majority of poor children live in households where there is at least one worker. The presence of more than one, and particularly more than two children, is one of the main factors associated with poverty for a low-income worker's household. Many poor households with at least one foreign member include children. Keeping these three groups distinct in the analysis prevents an unjustified clustering of the three and enables an exploration of the experience and risk of poverty from different perspectives: individual and the household, functioning of the labour market, gender division of labour within the household, functioning of welfare, discrimination against minority ethnic groups and lack of social capital.
3 - The Historical Roots of the Italian Poverty Regime
- Chiara Saraceno, David Benassi, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Enrica Morlicchio, Università degli Studi di Napoli 'Federico II'
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Summary
Some of the characteristics of the Italian poverty regime date back to the process of Italian unification in the second half of the 19th century, and to the impact it had on pre-existing regional differences in economic development − particularly on the North/South divide (Amendola et al, 2011b). These characteristics were partly reinforced by the path taken during the reconstruction following the Second World War and also during the so-called ‘boom years’ of the early 1960s, when Italy changed from a mainly rural to a mostly urban and industrialised society.
A poor, mostly rural country
At the time of Italian unification, in 1861, the Italian population was not only one of the most numerous, but also one of the poorest in Europe. Over 40% of the population had a disposable income insufficient to satisfy even basic needs (Amendola et al, 2011a, b). Illiteracy and child labour were widespread (A’Hearn et al, 2011; Cinnirella et al, 2011); labour, goods and capital markets were comparatively underdeveloped (Toniolo et al, 2003); and transportation infrastructures were largely inadequate, particularly in the South (Cannari and Chiri, 2003). Before Fascism came to power and before the setback caused by the international economic crisis in 1929, the following 60 years brought huge improvements on all levels, albeit unevenly across sectors and across regions (Vecchi, 2011).
According to estimates based on different sources and calculation methods, this general improvement resulted in a substantial reduction of absolute poverty in Italy, down to about 26% in 1921 (Amendola et al, 2011a). According to the same estimates, absolute poverty began to increase again after the 1929 economic crisis and in the initial years of the Fascist regime. While the regime did develop a fairly modern system of social protection for public employees, albeit only partly confirming that developed in previous years for core industrial workers (Bartocci, 1999), it did not address the needs (and risks) of rural workers and the rural population, of the rural and urban poor, and of the long-term unemployed or underemployed. Furthermore, some of the policies the regime put forward caused an increase in poverty, both in the urban and in the rural population, such as the re-evaluation of the lira with regard to the English pound in 1926 (the so-called quota 90), implemented with a restriction of credit and devaluation of wages and of remittances.
Acknowledgements
- Chiara Saraceno, David Benassi, Università degli Studi di Milano-Bicocca, Enrica Morlicchio, Università degli Studi di Napoli 'Federico II'
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Poverty in Italy
- Features and Drivers in a European Perspective
- Chiara Saraceno, David Benassi, Enrica Morlicchio
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Three experienced Italian sociologists explore the structural and cultural dimensions of poverty in their country. Comparing Italy's regime with other European countries, they consider the interplay of conditions in the labour market, the family and welfare arrangements as causes of poverty. This in-depth analysis explores how forced familialism, unbalanced gender arrangements, territorial cleavages and sluggish growth have rendered Italy vulnerable to financial crisis. As old risks of poverty have worsened, new risks have emerged and children, the working poor and migrants have become the 'new poor'. Combining theoretical and empirical tools, this is a topical fresh take on the understanding of poverty in Italy that is even more crucial considering the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.
4 - Caregiving and Paid work in Germany: The Impact of Social Inequality
- Edited by Blanche Le Bihan, Claude Martin, Trudie Knijn
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- Work and Care under Pressure
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- 31 October 2013, pp 79-100
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Introduction: The intersection between the policy framework and social inequalities
Caregivers develop their care arrangements in a context shaped by many factors: the degree of caregiving needed, other caregiving and familial demands, the degree to which caregiving tasks may be shared within the family and informal networks as well as with non-family services, and conditions at work. The interaction of these multiple factors and their variability over time render each case unique to some degree. Yet the policy framework along with the individual and household socio-economic resources are powerful elements in structuring the range of available options, particularly with regard to the two dimensions that are crucial for the viability of any care arrangement, particularly when the caregiver is in paid employment: the possibility of being relieved from part of the caregiving and a degree of control over one's own time. These factors also play an important role in diminishing or strengthening gender inequalities (Korpi 2000). In this chapter, therefore, we focus on the ways in which socio-economic conditions affect the caregiving strategies and arrangements of individuals and households in the German policy context.
Social inequalities concern first of all financial resources, in the sense that they make it possible to buy care (Arber & Ginn 1992; Carmichael & Charles 1998; Sarasa 2008; Saraceno 2010, 2011). Inadequate financial resources are especially crucial in Germany because access to affordable subsidised childcare facilities is limited (though there are important regional differences), market solutions are expensive, and tax deductions for private childcare costs favour wealthier parents. Only in recent years have family policies partially shifted their focus to encourage both labour market participation and fertility, specifically with regard to highly educated mothers (Jüttner, Leitner & Rüling 2009). The provision of services has been increased through the subsidisation of childminders, but the increase in services has failed to cover the demand. For older children, the right to a place in a kindergarten does not extend to the right to a full-day service. Furthermore, the opening hours and rigid organisation of childcare often do not fit parents’ changing schedules (Esch, Klaudy & Stöbe-Blossey 2005).
Elementary school, moreover, is mostly part-time. Any additional time (after-school clubs, early opening hours) must be paid for, and the quality and organisation of these services (e.g. whether or not they provide lunch) vary greatly across municipalities.
Foreword
- Cristina Solera, Università degli Studi di Torino
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- Women in and out of Paid Work
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- 05 July 2022
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Summary
Changes in women's behaviour with regard to fertility and labour market participation are possibly two of the most important processes that have reshaped the overall societal framework in the developed countries in the second half of the 20th century and in the first decade of the 21st. On the one hand, together with increasing life expectancy, low birth rates have reshaped the demography both of society and of families and kin. On the other hand, women’s, and particularly mothers’, labour market participation has not only changed women's lifecourse patterns and resources; it has also changed the organisation of everyday life for families, men and children. The timing of these two processes, which are linked in complex and not univocal ways, has been different in the various countries. Furthermore, it has involved different social groups within as well as across countries, redesigning patterns of similarities and dissimilarities.
Cristina Solera's work focuses specifically on one of these two processes: changes in women's labour market participation. More specifically, it focuses on changes in the way in which women since the post-war years have or not combined over the lifecourse participation in paid work and constructing their families. For men in industrialised societies, these two life trajectories and ‘careers’ (in Elder's – 1994 – meaning of life career), in fact, have become increasingly mutually reinforcing. For women, by contrast, these trajectories have become mutually weakening, if not exclusive. So much so, that in public discourse, their possible compatibility is now framed in the terminology of ‘reconciling’ (paid) work and the family, thus alluding to some mythical golden age when working and having a family were easy to combine. Only in the late 20th century did the contraposition between raising a family and being in paid work begin to weaken. For an increasing proportion of women, the two life trajectories became intertwined, although not to the same extent and nor through the same mechanisms across countries and social groups. Furthermore, even at present, any analysis of the impact on the likelihood of a woman with a child aged under six of being in employment compared with a childless woman shows that, among men and women in the 25-44 age bracket, the impact is uniformly positive for men in the European Union, and almost uniformly negative for women (the exceptions being Slovenia), although ranging from –34% in the Czech Republic to –1% in Portugal.