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The article explores the relationship between becoming a grandmother and retiring in Italy. In contrast to the US and other countries in Europe, the two events do not overlap in Italy, and the former hardly influences the latter. Francesca Zanasi and Inge Sieben interpret the findings in relation to the familistic structure of Italy.

BACKGROUND All available evidence suggests that the number of deaths linked to COVID-19 among those living in nursing homes is extremely high. Yet, it remains unknown to what extent there are socio-economic differences among nursing home residents, which can lead, in turn, to social inequality in mortality linked to COVID. OBJECTIVE We investigate whether there are educational differences in the likelihood of living in a nursing home across 13 European countries: Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Slovenia, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland. METHODS We use SHARE data (waves 5-7). We compute logistic regression models for rare events. RESULTS We find that there are sizeable differences in the probability of being in a nursing home, with low-educated individuals more likely to live in this kind of arrangement. This general pattern holds in all the European countries considered. There is considerable uncertainty in our estimates due to small Ns problems and firm conclusions on how the effect of education varies across countries cannot be drawn. Still, there is some indication that the largest educational differences are found in the Scandinavian countries and the smaller ones, even close to zero, in Southern European Countries, with countries in Continental Europe and Eastern Europe laying in between. CONTRIBUTION To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that provides country specific evidence of educational differences in the probability of being in a nursing home in recent years. In this way, we also provide indirect evidence on social inequality in mortality linked to the COVID-19 pandemic.

The paper investigates the consequences of grandmotherhood on retirement for Italian mid-life women born before 1949. It accounts for eventual differences in terms of work history, as the transition to retirement depends on the number of years worked, and the kind of job held. Using retrospective data from the ISTAT Multipurpose Survey Families and Social Subjects (2009), individual fixed-effects models show that there is only a weak relation between the birth of the first grandchild and retirement for Italian grandmothers, and no differences in term of work history. The authors argue that the result could originate from two parallel processes. On the one hand, mid-life women seem to retire before becoming grandmothers in Italy (as Kaplan-Meier survivor functions suggest). This could be due to the interplay of the postponement of fertility and availability of early retirement options: women became grandmothers late in life, and they have the possibility to retire early. On the other hand, Italy has a very low female labour force participation rate, and several young mothers are not employed due to the difficulty to reconcile work and family. In other words, young mothers do not need support by grandmothers with childcare, and therefore, grandmothers do not need to early retire so to be helpful with care duties toward grandchildren.

Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-1-jah-10.1177_08982643211039637 for Retirement? Other Ways Out of the Labour Market Are Far More Worrying for Health: Results from a Matching Approach Study by Elena Pirani, Gustavo De Santis and Francesca Zanasi in Journal of Aging and Health

Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-1-jah-10.1177_08982643211039637 for Retirement? Other Ways Out of the Labour Market Are Far More Worrying for Health: Results from a Matching Approach Study by Elena Pirani, Gustavo De Santis and Francesca Zanasi in Journal of Aging and Health

Supplemental Material, sj-pdf-1-jah-10.1177_08982643211039637 for Retirement? Other Ways Out of the Labour Market Are Far More Worrying for Health: Results from a Matching Approach Study by Elena Pirani, Gustavo De Santis and Francesca Zanasi in Journal of Aging and Health