Floro Ernesto Caroleo, Gianna Claudia Giannelli and Francesco Pastore
This purpose of this paper is to introduce the special issue on vulnerability and discrimination among women, children and ethnic minorities.
Abstract
Purpose
This purpose of this paper is to introduce the special issue on vulnerability and discrimination among women, children and ethnic minorities.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper discusses the articles in the special issue which employ a variety of individual‐level data, some of which are newly available, and of econometric methods for the analysis of the determinants of labour supply and wages of different vulnerable groups.
Findings
The articles manifest an amazing similarity of issues, nuances and policy implications, showing that the causes and consequences of absolute and relative vulnerability are common all over the world. The first set of papers may be framed within the definition of relative vulnerability: in fact, they refer to gender discrimination in Spain and Italy; gender and ethnic wage differentials in China; discrimination against Roma in Southeastern Europe; and the gender gap in early career in Mongolia. The second set of papers deals with absolute vulnerability: in fact, they study different aspects of child labour in India, Indonesia and Pakistan.
Originality/value
The paper introduces a number of articles using little used data and uses a wide range of up‐to‐date theoretical and methodological approaches to the issues of vulnerability and discrimination.
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Keywords
Francesca Francavilla and Gianna Claudia Giannelli
This paper aims to study the relation between the employment of mothers and the activities of children with the aim of contributing to the understanding of child work in India.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to study the relation between the employment of mothers and the activities of children with the aim of contributing to the understanding of child work in India.
Design/methodology/approach
Multinomial logit specifications of children's activities and mothers' employment are estimated on survey data drawn from the National Family Health Survey 1998‐1999 for all India. The joint specification combines four states of children aged 6‐14 (studying, working in the market, working for the family or being inactive) with the employed/not employed status of mothers.
Findings
The results show that the mother's preferred choice is not working and sending children to school. This is especially true for more educated mothers. Also the father's education is positively (negatively) related to child schooling (work), but the effect is smaller as compared to that of mothers. All specifications yield the result that the probability of children working increases if their mothers work. Higher levels of household wealth play a fundamental role in lowering the risk of child work.
Research limitations/implications
This empirical model does not take into account the unobserved heterogeneity of two types – namely, the residual correlation among the outcomes of mothers and children, and the residual correlation among children of the same mother.
Practical implications
The evidence that children of employed mothers have a higher risk of working suggests that the problem may be related to the low quality and pay of jobs accessible to women in India, especially in rural areas. The policy indication would then be to improve the condition of women in the labour market and also to improve the welfare of their children.
Originality/value
While women's and children's time allocation has been studied in separate settings, in this paper these two aspects are analysed together for the first time.
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Gianna Claudia Giannelli and Chiara Monfardini
Household arrangements and human capital investment decisions of young Italians with a high school diploma are analysed. A model of the choices of residing with parents or forming…
Abstract
Household arrangements and human capital investment decisions of young Italians with a high school diploma are analysed. A model of the choices of residing with parents or forming a new family, jointly with those of investing in either work experience, or further education, or stopping investment is estimated. The results show that family background has a major impact on the decision to study, housing costs induce co‐residence, and unemployment increases the probability of studying. Education policies subsidising university studies on a merit ground would thus reduce income inequality, housing allowances would favour marriage, and labour policies would have the side‐effect of decreasing university dropouts.