Finanziamento UE – NextGenerationEU PRIN 2022 "Social and Spatial Inequalities Under Pressure (So SpIn UP). Individual Life Courses in context during the Covid-19 Pandemic" PNRR M4C2 investimento 1.1 Avviso 104/2022

This research proposal aims to analyse a wide range of socio-economic consequences of the SARS-CoV-2 (hereafter COV19) pandemic on existing spatial and social inequalities in Italy in the short- and mid-term. The focus is on the way and extent to which the health emergency is reshaping everyday lives and affecting life courses in different territorial contexts. Close attention will be paid to the multiple changes, at the individual and household levels occurring simultaneously in the following life domains: employment, family dynamics and care relations, health and subjective wellbeing, and the transition to adulthood. Specifically, the project will focus on understanding social inequalities through the lenses of spatial and social embeddedness effects of contextual circumstances in terms of household characteristics, socio-economic and spatial inequalities, dynamics of epidemic spread and institutional settings (e.g. hospital beds availability), i.e. spatial-context effects. Italy is characterised by sharp territorial differences in relation to the distribution of its population, a long rooted unequal development and the specificity of its local economies that shape individuals’ life courses and opportunities. Building on the life-course approach (Settersten et al. 2020) and combining a unique quantitative and qualitative longitudinal panel data for Italy with several administrative data sources, the project will investigate the economic, social and health effects of COV19 in light of the cumulative nature of life courses. Life domains will be conceptualised as path- and inter-dependent, and life courses as trajectories shaped by individuals who are both closely “linked” to others (e.g., family members and friends) and nested within specific institutional, cultural and geographical contexts, which provide them with resources and place constraints on their agency. Analyses will draw on a new database resulting from the integration of Italian Lives (ITA.LI), the most recent nationally representative longitudinal survey for Italy, with a rich set of spatially-based administrative data retrieved from several institutions. By integrating individuals’ survey records with time varying information at the respective level of geographical location (e.g., infection rates, death rates, area’s population density, age distribution, hospital capacity), the project will evaluate whether COV19 has exacerbated existing inequalities in Italy, or created new ones. The project will also estimate whether COV19’s direct and indirect effects persist over time and whether these effects are moderated by individual, family and contextual factors. Besides exploring short- and mid-term effects of the pandemic, the project will endow the scientific community with an unprecedented multi-source and multi-level panel archive combining both spatially- and time-related data.