Social Origin and Family Formation: How Marriage and Parenthood Affect the (Re)production of Social Inequalities

This chapter presents new empirical findings on how family formation processes contribute to the (re)production of social inequalities in the labour market. Focusing on Italy and employing an innovative method that combines statistical matching techniques with the estimation of panel models with fixed effects (see Panichella & Cantalini, 2023), it explores whether men and women from different family backgrounds display different union formation and fertility behaviours and whether such behaviours have heterogeneous effects on labour market and occupational opportunities depending on social origins. Results show limited variation in family formation behaviours across family backgrounds for men, whereas among women, those from lower socio-economic backgrounds exhibit higher probabilities of forming families compared to their counterparts from higher social classes, especially when it comes to entering motherhood. Furthermore, while the impact of family formation on labour market outcomes does not vary significantly by social origin for men, women from lower social classes experience greater career penalties than their higher-origin peers, particularly in terms of employment withdrawal. These findings suggest that family formation processes act as key mechanisms driving inequality among women, contributing to the production and reproduction of social inequalities.