This paper examines earnings differences between first-generation and continuing-generation college graduates across 24 OECD countries using data from the OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC). In most countries analyzed, first-generation graduates earn significantly less than their peers from college-educated families, with an average gap across all countries of approximately 7.5%. We investigate potential mechanisms behind this result and find that first-generation graduates are less likely to pursue postgraduate education, more likely to hold professional degrees, more likely to work in smaller firms and lower paying occupation, and tend to have lower cognitive skills. These findings highlight the need for policy interventions to enhance educational mobility and promote equality of opportunity.

Entry in many occupations is regulated with the objective to screen out the least able producers and guarantee high quality of output. Unfortunately, the available empirical evidence suggests that in most cases these objectives are not achieved. In this paper we investigate entry into the legal profession in Italy and we document that such a failure is due to the combination of the incomplete anonymity of the entry exam and the intergenerational transmission of business opportunities. We use microdata covering the universe of law school graduates from 2007 to 2013 matched with their careers and earnings up to 5 years after graduation. Variation generated by the random assignment of the entry exam grading commissions allows us to identify the role of family ties in the selection process. We find that connected candidates, i.e. those with relatives already active in the profession, are more likely to pass the exam and eventually earn more, especially those who performed poorly in law school. When we simulate the process of occupational choice assuming family connections did not matter, we find that strong positive selection on ability would emerge.

Information friction makes it difficult for job seekers to find new employment opportunities. We propose a method for providing individual-specific occupation recommendations by ranking occupations based on their proximity to the worker’s profile. We identify a set of twelve skills, abilities and work styles that capture the worker-oriented requirements of all occupations and discuss how to measure these items using online questions and tasks. We use the Euclidean distance between the measured items pertaining to a worker and the requirements of an occupation to measure the proximity between job seekers and occupations. We show that the proximity between job seekers’ profiles and their preunemployment occupation predicts their intention to change occupations, thus suggesting that our method captures a meaningful conceptualization of mismatch. We also show that our method generates recommendations that differ from the previous occupations of mismatched job seekers, thereby potentially expanding their search scope.

We study the choice of acquiring STEM and non-STEM college education using variation induced by the proximity to universities offering different types of programs. We adopt a novel methodology allowing the identification of the distribution of response types and treatment effects in a multiple unordered discrete choice setting (Heckman and Pinto, 2018). The empirical analysis is based on confidential survey data for Italy, combined with administrative information about the founding dates of all Italian universities and faculties. We find that most compliers are women at the margin of choosing STEM education versus not going to college. We simulate the effects of expanding the supply of STEM education and discover that, in addition to substantial effects on employment, the gender disparity in STEM education could potentially decrease by up to 20%.

AbstractThis chapter shows that individuals’ trajectories in personal networks and the labour market are closely intertwined. A person’s network facilitates access to jobs in different ways. As people create relationships and accumulate social contacts, they obtain more information about job opportunities and embark on more rewarding careers. However, personal relationships may also hamper employment prospects. If employers expect that the obligations accruing from family-care reduce productivity, the consequence will be stunted careers and lower wages, notably for mothers. Yet the extent to which social relations help or hinder work trajectories varies across Europe and crucially depends on employment and family policies. Moreover, the spill-over effects between the two life domains travel both ways as employment outcomes also affect personal relationships. A prime example is how job loss affects the stability of partnerships. While recessions reduce the divorce rate at the aggregate level, the minority of individuals who lose their jobs are more likely to see their couples break up. Our chapter discusses the theory of spill-over effects between social relations and employment and reviews cutting-edge research in economics and sociology on the topic.

Dans cet article, nous remarquons que la littérature sur les interactions sociales devrait intégrer beaucoup plus étroitement l’étude du processus de formation des réseaux avec l’analyse des effets des pairs, à la fois théoriquement et empiriquement. Nous présentons aussi des preuves empiriques en utilisant un échantillon d’étudiants universitaires qui suggèrent un comportement prospectif dans le choix des partenaires d’étude. Les étudiants semblent avoir des préférences homophiliques selon la capacité académique, à la fois conditionnelles et inconditionnelles à d’autres variables observables qui ne sont pas directement liées à la capacité. Ces préférences homophiliques sont sensiblement plus prononcées chez les élèves les plus doués.

Using a randomized experiment in a public Swiss university, we study the impact of online live streaming of lectures on student achievement and attendance. We find that (i) attending lectures via live streaming lowers achievement for low-ability students and increases achievement for high-ability ones; (ii) students use the live streaming technology only occasionally, apparently when random events make attending in class too costly, and (iii) offering live streaming reduces in-class attendance only mildly. These findings have important implications for the effective design of education policies.

In spite of a rapidly ageing population, there is a lack of population-based data on mortality among nursing home residents in Southern Europe. To assess mortality rates, their determinants, and causes of death in newly admitted nursing home residents in the Veneto region (northeastern Italy). 19,392 subjects aged ≥ 65 years admitted to regional nursing homes during 2015–2017 were recruited in a cohort mortality study based on linked health records. Risk factors for mortality were investigated by Cox regression. The distribution of causes of death was retrieved from death certificates. Mortality peaked in the first 4 months after admission; thereafter the monthly mortality rate fluctuated around 3% in males and 2% in females. Overall mortality was 23% at 6 months and 34% at 1 year. In addition to age, gender, and dependency, main risk factors for mortality were recent hospitalization (first 4 months after entry into the facility), and the burden of comorbidities (subsequent follow-up period). The most represented causes of mortality were similar in the first and in the subsequent period after admission: cardio-cerebrovascular diseases, neurodegenerative diseases, respiratory diseases, and infections. The first months after admission represent a period at high risk of mortality, especially for patients with a recent hospitalization. Causes reported in death certificates suggest mainly an acute deterioration of pre-existing chronic conditions. Health care plans should be personalized for newly admitted vulnerable patients. Palliative care needs should be recognized and addressed for high-risk non-cancer patients.

We propose a model where forward-looking agents first decide to form links with each other and, then, engage in a production activity jointly with their linked peers. Exogenous linking opportunities facilitate the creation of network connections and the return to productive effort varies with the personal attributes of the connected agents. We apply our model to a purposely built dataset of college students containing information on the endogeneous networks of study partners linked with administrative records on the students' characteristics and academic performance. Identification relies upon the random assignment of students to classrooms, which generates exogenous opportunities for socialisation. Using the estimated structural parameters, we investigate the implications of two counterfactual experiments, one where students are streamed into classes by ability and one with single-sex classes.

Introduction: COVID-19 case fatality rate in hospitalized patients varies across countries and studies. Reliable estimates, specific for age, sex, and comorbidities, are needed to monitor the epidemic, to compare the outcome in different settings, and to correctly design trials for COVID-19 interventions. The aim of this study was to provide population-based survival curves of hospitalized COVID-19 patients. Materials and Methods: A cohort study was conducted in three areas of Northern Italy, heavily affected by SARS-CoV-2 infection (Lombardy and Veneto Regions, and Reggio Emilia province), using a loco-regional COVID-19 surveillance system, linked to hospital discharge databases. We included all patients testing positive for SARS-CoV-2 RNA by RT-PCR on nasopharyngeal/throat swab samples who were hospitalized from 21 February to 21 April 2020. Kaplan-Meier survival estimates were calculated at 14 and 30 days for death in any setting, stratifying by age, sex, and the Charlson Index. Results: Overall, 42,926 hospitalized COVID-19 patients were identified. Patients' median age was 69 years (IQR: 57-79), 62.6% were males, and 6.0% had a Charlson Index >= 3. Survival curves showed that 22.0% (95% CI 21.6-22.4) of patients died within 14 days and 27.6% (95% CI 27.2-28.1) within 30 days from hospitalization. Survival was higher in younger patients and in females. The negative impact of comorbidities on survival was more pronounced in younger age groups. Conclusion: The high fatality rate observed in the study (28% at 30 days) suggests that studies should focus on death as primary endpoint during a follow-up of at least one month.

We revisit the role of labour market institutions by showing how they affect the sharing of firm-specific rents between employers and employees. We look at an Italian wage indexation mechanism ('Scala Mobile') that compressed the distribution of wages, imposing real wage increases at the bottom of the distribution. After developing a simplified version of a search model with intra-firm bargaining and on-the-job search, we document that skilled workers received lower wage adjustments when employed at firms with many unskilled workers and they tended to move towards more skill-intensive firms. Moreover, the system drove the least skill-intensive firms out of the market.

We construct comparable measures of intergenerational mobility (IM) for 103 Italian provinces using the methodology of Guell etal. (2007, 2015a) and explore their correlation with a variety of social and economic outcomes. We find that higher IM is positively associated with economic activity, education and social capital and negatively correlated with inequality. Moreover, there is no clear pattern of correlation with other socio-political variables. These results are qualitatively similar to Chetty etal. (2014), with the important difference that Italy is a highly centralised state where institutions and policies are de jure' the same in all provinces. This suggests that something beyond institutional and policy differences also shapes intergenerational mobility.

By comparing siblings attending the same school at different points of time, we estimate the effects of schoolmates’ average parental education on lifetime earnings and other medium and long-term outcomes and investigate whether these effects vary with individual parental education. We find that exposure to privileged peers increases lifetime earnings and the probability of completing tertiary education. These effects are mainly concentrated among “disadvantaged” students. Lifetime earnings increase also with the dispersion of peers’ average parental education. These results suggest that school desegregation policies can produce long-term benefits. The size of the estimated effects, however, is small.

This paper proposes a new measure of skill mismatch to be applied to the recent OECD Survey of Adult Skills (PIAAC). The measure is derived from a formal theory and combines information about skill proficiency, self-reported mismatch and skill use. The theoretical foundations underling this measure allow identifying minimum and maximum skill requirements for each occupation and to classify workers into three groups: the well-matched, the under-skilled and the over-skilled. The availability of skill use data further permits the computation of the degree of under- and over-usage of skills in the economy. The empirical analysis is carried out using the first round of the PIAAC data, allowing comparisons across skill domains, labour market statuses and countries.

A high hospital utilisation at the end of life (EOL) is an indicator of suboptimal quality of health care. We evaluated the impact of the intensity of different Integrated Cancer Palliative Care (ICPC) plans on EOL acute medical hospitalisation among cancer decedents. Decedents of cancer aged 18-84years, who were residents in two Italian regions, were investigated through integrated administrative data. Outcomes considered were prolonged hospital stay for medical reasons, 2+ hospitalisations during the last month of life and hospital death. The ICPC plans instituted 90 to 31days before death represented the main exposure of interest. Other variables considered were gender, age class at death, marital status, recent hospitalisation and primary cancer site. Among 6,698 patients included in ICPC plans, 44.3% presented at least one critical outcome indicator; among these, 76.5% died in hospital, 60.3% had a prolonged (12+ days) medical hospitalisation, 19.1% had 2+ hospitalisations at the EOL. These outcomes showed a strong dose-response effect with the intensity of the ICPC plans, which is already evident at levels of moderate intensity. A well-ICPC approach can be very effectivebeginning at low levels of intensity of carein reducing the percentage of patients spending many days or dying in hospital.