Youth re-employment probabilities in a gender perspective: the case of Italy

This paper studies the gender gap in re-employment probabilities of young Italian people aged 15-34 by using the 1985-2004 WHIP data. We estimate the hazard rates of the young people by contract type, i.e. permanent and atypical contract. Then, we decompose the overall gender gap and, within gender, across some of the most relevant sources of the Italian labour market segmentation. We isolate the components due to gender differences in individual characteristics and/or productivity and to remunerations of similar characteristics and/or discrimination. We find that young women are penalized in terms of re-employment perspectives with permanent contracts, especially those living in the South of Italy.