Since the early 90s, Italy has undergone radical changes in the regulations of the public pension system aimed at mending its main drawbacks and improving sustainability in the long run. The reforms were intended to recover the national economy through a significant reduction of benefits by increasing, particularly for younger people, individual responsibility for the accumulation of retirement wealth. Adopting an enhanced version of the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), which includes affective reactions, the present paper aims to understand the factors influencing the intention to enroll in a private pension plan through the purchase of longevity annuity coverage on the part of young adults. A purposive sample of 7480 Italian people aged 25–35 participated in the survey. Collected data were analyzed adopting an ordinal logistic regression (OLR) model. The findings confirm the predictive power of the TPB in the financial field of longevity annuity buying, show that anticipated affective reactions increase the predictive power of the TPB model, and reveal that the influence of the investigated constructs varies alongside people’s willingness to purchase. The outcomes provide useful recommendations to the policy maker and private companies to favor the adoption of wide-spread desired behaviors among citizenships.

Educational researchers have increasingly recognised the importance of school climate as a malleable factor for improving academic performance. In this perspective, we exploit the data collected by the Italian Institute for the Evaluation of the Education System (INVALSI) to assess the effect of some school climate related factors on academic performance of tenth-grade Italian students. A Multilevel Bayesian Structural Equation Model (MBSEM) is adopted to highlight the effect of some relevant dimensions of school climate (students’ disciplinary behaviour and parents’ involvement) on academic performance and their role on the relationships between student socioeconomic status and achievement. The main findings show that disciplinary behaviour, on the one hand, directly influences the level of competence of the students, and, on the other hand, it partly mediates the effect of socioeconomic background whereas parents’ involvement does not appear to exert any significant effect on students’ performance.

This study aims to provide a comprehensive framework for understanding citizens’ intentions to engage in environmentally sustainable behavior, thus making cities more sustainable. This article investigates environmentally sustainable behavior by adopting the Theory of Reasoned Action (TRA). Using Partial Least Square Path Modeling (PLS-PM), an analysis of survey data from 224 respondents in Italy revealed the salient role of attitudes, subjective norms, intentions, and urban sustainable policies in urban sustainable behavior. Our findings have important implications for theory and practice in this new area of inquiry.

Gender stereotypes are deeply ingrained in our culture and are a root cause of gender inequalities. Gender stereotypes can limit ability and aspirations to choose a field of study or training, pursue a professional career, and make simple life choices, like picking a hobby. Although inequalities still exist, the EU has made significant progress in gender equality over the last decades. There are numerous indices built for measure gender gap. In 2013, European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) released the Gender Equality Index (GEI), created to assess the levels of gender equality in Europe based on EU policies. This index is currently based on seven domains: work and money, knowledge, time, power, health, trust and safety, quality and life satisfaction. Our work intends to identify a measurement of the gender inequalities in the Italian region and the changes caused by COVID-19 pandemic. Starting from the domains proposed by the GEI, integrated with some of the indicators of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), eight dimensions were identified and a ninth of a more specific nature was added, called "Gender-based violence".

Gender differences are an inherent part of human existence. However, beyond biological disparities, social structures have historically established gender-based roles, distinct societal functions, and varying social status across genders. The gender gap affects everyone: our families, communities, workplaces, societies and this influenced women health, well-being and quality of life. The EU has made significant progress in terms of gender equality in recent decades. A European-level tool that monitors disparities between men and women in different member countries is the Gender Equality Index, developed by the European Institute for Gender Equality (EIGE) in 2013. Starting from the analysis proposed by EIGE, the aim of this work is to represent gender differences in Italian regions in 3 domains: Health, Well-being and Quality of life. Using a multisource approach, simple indicators, both objective and subjective, were chosen for each domain. A total of 14 indicators were calculated, starting from Multipurpose survey on households “Aspects of daily life”, Life tables and Multipurpose Survey: time use (all by Istat). The analyses were carried out with a model based on the use of multivariate analysis techniques and the construction of synthetic indices, one for each domain, capable of providing an overall view, which cannot be obtained by considering individual elements separately. The results show for Quality life satisfaction and Health a gap in favour of men, except for some territorial differences; instead, women reveal a better lifestyle, so the results of Well-being domain are to the advantage of them.