(Withdrawn) Do flexible employment contracts change household income differences in Italy?

Carmen Aina, University of Eastern Piedmont
Fernanda Mazzotta, University of Salerno
Lavinia Parisi, University of Salerno

This paper examines whether the growing use of non-permanent contracts may have influenced the intra-family income differences in Italy over time. After the 1990s, a number of reforms were implemented to reduce the levels of employment protection in favour of permanent workers. In particular, the first considerable intervention, in the aforementioned direction, occurred in 1997 through the so-called Pacchetto Treu (L.196/1997), then carried on with the Biagi Law (L. 30/2003) which essentially introduced additional types of temporary contracts. However, the proliferation of the so-called atypical or non-standard forms of employment calls into question the greater discrimination of such category of workers. In particular, the contribution of each individual to other family members, as the ratio between the difference of his/hers personal income and the per-capita income and the equivalent household income, is calculated. Two longitudinal data drawn from the Italian surveys - ECHP and IT-Silc - conducted respectively over the period 1995-96 and 2005-2006 are used. Panel data technique are performed for men and women separately . Our results confirm that the contribution changes both across gender and age over the span considered. Men are generally more likely to support other family members. Not surprisingly, instead, more educated women positively contribute to narrow family income differences. On the contrary, sons play the role of money receivers with regard to other family members, and the magnitude of the coefficient is larger when labour market flexibility has been already implemented. Finally, with regard to the contract-related variables, the category of workers, in a less favourable financial condition, are those who have a temporary contract and work part-time apart from those who have other atypical contract forms. Those who are out of the labour market for several reasons, i.e. retirement, unemployment and inactivity, contribute negatively within the family.