GLOBAL CHANGE * CULTURE = ?

What is ifamid about?

In a nutshell, we are interested in the interaction between global change and culture. When we think of Globalization, we tend to think of convergence. Ideas and information are spreading quicker than ever, which suggests convergence in terms of values, ideas and behaviors. However, this is not always the case: while countries are increasingly subject to common forces, the outcomes are far from homogeneous. When new global forces clash with local cultural norms, what happens to socio-demographic behaviors?

IFAMID, led by Università Bocconi PI Arnstein Aassve, attempts to answer this question by presenting a new framework for the analysis of family demography.

The empirical side of the project focuses on explaining:

1.    fertility trends and differentials in OECD countries,

2.    the transition to adulthood,

3.    the global perspective of fertility change.

Impact

An important aspect of this approach is that policies contained within existing welfare constellations, often taken as explanatory factors for family outcomes, are necessarily endogenous, and their evolution depends on the underlying quality of relevant institutions and cultural traits, which may react very differently with respect to the onset of global trends, and therefore give different patterns of family formation.