Books & Reports

Across the globe, family policy is becoming ever more important in tackling key issues such as poverty, child welfare and the state of the economy in general. The Handbook of Family Policy examines how state and workplace policies support parents and their children in developing, earning and caring.

Youth Labor in Transition examines young people's integration into employment, alongside the decisions and consequences of migrating to find work and later returning home. The authors identify key policy challenges for the future related to NEETS, overeducation, self-employment, and ethnic differences in outcomes. This illustrates the need to encompass a wider understanding of youth employment and job insecurity by including an analysis of economic production and how it relates to social reproduction of labor if policy intervention is to be effective. ​

In this book new mathematical and statistical techniques that permit more sophisticated analysis are refined and applied to questions of current concern in order to understand the forces that are driving the recent dramatic changes in family patterns. The areas examined include the impact of the evolving Second Demographic Transition, where complex patterns of gender dynamics and social change are re-orienting family life. 

Italian society is changing profoundly and rapidly due to the pressure of demographic changes that redesign its composition. Yet the demographic issue does not have a significant presence in the political and media debate and is often faced with generic tones, sufficient enough to satisfy specific curiosities or rhetorical needs, but unsuitable to support a constructive reflection.

In this book, Letizia Mencarini and Daniele Vignoli draw a complete picture of Italy's low fertility. “We could say that we are in the middle of a "demographic trap": The fewer children of the past, who are today's parents, are again increasingly fewer and older. Therefore, they are tying down not only current births, but also future ones.”