Environmental issues and climate change pose a growing threat to public health and longevity across Europe, with air and noise pollution contributing significantly to premature mortality and diminished quality of life. In this paper, we investigate perceived environmental risks. The probit method is used to estimate the probability of perceived exposure to noise or pollution controlling for individual and household characteristics. The dataset is the 2023 Survey of Income and Living Conditions for European Union countries (except Germany, Ireland, Slovenia and the Netherlands) and Serbia. Our results reveal significant heterogeneity between European countries; however, in all but one country, living in cities, towns or suburbs vs. living in rural areas has a significant influence on the probability of perceived exposure to noise or pollution. The marginal effect for urban areas ranges from 2% in Slovakia to 40% in Greece. There is no significant difference between genders. Elderly people have a lower probability of perceived exposure. When compared to tenants, homeowners have a lower probability of perceived exposure, suggesting that individuals chose to buy property for living in areas with fewer environmental problems. In the majority of countries, people at-risk-of-poverty have a higher probability of perceived exposure to noise or pollution. In Serbia and Latvia, the effect is opposite: poverty is higher in rural than in urban areas, and the former areas have lower perceived exposure to noise or pollution. Our results suggest that effective policy measures are necessary to reduce noise and pollution in urban areas all around Europe. Additionally, policies for reducing urban-rural inequalities within countries could have a direct effect on a more equal distribution of risks between cities, towns and rural areas.
Europe’s renewed fertility decline has intensified concern about whether adverse economic conditions delay or suppress family formation, yet average macroeconomic effects may conceal the household constraints through which shocks operate. This study distinguishes the direct effects of housing-cost pressure and youth unemployment from their moderating roles in the relationship between economic downturns and the total fertility rate (TFR). The principal analysis uses a common sample of 565 country-year observations from 36 European countries during 2005–2024. Real GDP-per-capita growth is decomposed into expansions and downturns. The main country- and year-fixed-effects specifications use two-year-lagged predictors and country-clustered standard errors. No general direct effect of downturns is detected. In the preferred joint model, the downturn × housing-pressure interaction is negative and statistically significant (b = −0.0035, SE = 0.0013, p = .012), whereas the downturn × youth-unemployment interaction is small and not statistically significant (b = 0.0006, SE = 0.0019, p = .739). Youth unemployment has a negative direct association with fertility when entered without aggregate unemployment (b = −0.0632, p = .013), but youth and aggregate unemployment are highly correlated and cannot be cleanly separated when entered together. The housing interaction remains significant with two-way-clustered and Driscoll–Kraay standard errors and in several robustness models, but not under all lag and country-trend specifications. Its substantive magnitude is modest: a five-percentage-point downturn at one standard deviation above mean housing pressure is associated with an estimated TFR change of −0.0086 (95% CI: −0.0562, 0.0390). The findings therefore support a cautious conditional interpretation: housing pressure is associated with a more negative downturn–fertility slope, while youth unemployment is more consistently related to fertility directly than as a moderator.
This study examines whether the municipalities classified as flood-affected during the May 2014 floods experienced a differential change in formally registered internal out-migration relative to non-flooded municipalities. The analysis uses a balanced municipality-year panel for 2009–2018, comprising 40 flood-affected and 125 non-flooded municipalities, with municipality and calendar-year fixed effects. The primary estimate is positive but imprecise (0.239 per 1,000 residents; 95% CI: −0.423 to 0.901). A restricted matched-sample estimate is larger but also imprecise, while a specification allowing NUTS2 region-specific annual shocks produces a larger positive estimate. Event-study and placebo diagnostics provide no statistical evidence of differential pre-treatment changes, although their confidence intervals are wide. Exploratory analyses suggest that estimated responses may vary by selected pre-flood municipal characteristics, but they do not identify household-level mechanisms. The findings do not support a single specification-invariant estimate of a positive average flood effect; they show that the estimated municipality-level association is sensitive to the comparison group and the treatment of regional annual shocks.
