Housing and the Labour Market

The XVI European Conference of the Fondazione Ing. Rodolfo Debenedetti dealt with “Housing, and the Labor Market”.

Carlo De Benedetti (President of the Fondazione RDB) and Ignazio Marino (Mayor of Rome) opened the conference with a brief welcome message.

During the morning session, chaired by Etienne Wasmer (Sciences Po, Paris), Andrea Ichino (European University Institute) presented the research “Housing, Real Inequality and Mobility” (a joint work with Tito Boeri (Fondazione RDB and Università Bocconi) and Enrico Moretti (University of California at Berkeley). The research provides new estimates of inter-provincial differences in the cost of living based on housing costs. It also investigates, in light of these, real geographical inequalities in wages, income and consumption in Italy, and how such geographical differences may explain the (relatively low) Italian internal migration flows.

In the afternoon the report “At the margins. Homelessness and Social Exclusion in an International Perspective” was presented by Michela Braga (Università Bocconi), coordinator of the research, Lucia Corno (Queen Mary University of London), Brendan O’Flaherty (Columbia University), Rosanna Scutella (University of Melbourne – MIAERS) and Gavin Wood (RMIT University). The report focuses on homelessness across developed countries (Europe, United States and Australia) looking at its incidence, different institutional settings (housing policies in particular) and cultural values. Homelessness is also studied from a micro perspective, using an innovative survey on homeless people, collected by the authors in Milan (2008 and 2013), Turin (2010) and Rome (in 2014). Data on homeless people in Rome, in particular, represent a novelty, and are the result of a joint effort of the Fondazione R. Debenedetti and the City of Rome, with the collaboration of several associations and more than 1,000 volunteers. The report was discussed by Luigi Guiso (EIEF – Einaudi Institute for Economics and Finace) and Chiara Saraceno (University of Turin and Collegio Carlo Alberto).

The conference was concluded by a panel discussion “What to do for the homeless?” chaired by Tito Boeri (Fondazione RDB and Università Bocconi) with the participation of Rita Cutini (Counsellor for Social Support and Subsidiarity, City of Rome), Mons. Enrico Feroci (Director Caritas Rome) and Maria Cecilia Guerra (Italian Senate of the Republic).