Socio-Demographic Vulnerability of Youth

For a kind of inertia effect, the Italian welfare state protects today the old age too intensely while little the new risks associated with other phases of life course. Young Italians seem to suffer the actual changes: “youth remain longer in parental home and postpone the creation of its own independent life to most advanced age”. To understand the vulnerability situation increasingly widespreading among young people, it seems more and more necessary the depth analysis of the reasons and the subjective status of this discomfort that occur through a delay in transition to adulthood. In particular we study the self-perceived vulnerability situation of young Italians in the labor market (both in terms of quantity and quality of employment), in education (both in terms of results and time needed to achieve), in leaving parental home and building a new family, to understand what is the subjective status that prevents young people from planning an adult life, having a partner and possibly having a child. In order to study the subjective well-being of youth we use the Italian Multiaim Survey named “Famiglia, soggetti sociali e condizioni dell’infanzia” carried out in 2003 that contains question on opinion about the main demographic choices of life. Specifically our analysis discusses the concept of sociodemographic vulnerability and the strengths and weaknesses of different indicators. We consider the principles underlying the construction of indicators, the definition of indicators, and the issues that arise in their implementation. This paper tries to bring together theoretical and methodological methods in the measurement of socio-demographic vulnerability with the empirical practice of social policy.