Family values

conomist Andrea Ichino is the co-author, with Albert Alesina of "L'Italia Fatta in Casa," which attempts to assess Italy's gross national product in terms of the value of goods and services produced in the home and family context, outside the traditional confines of the industrial marketplace.

For example, most Italian child and elderly care is managed by families instead of being farmed out to third-person institutions, which flourish in North America. According to Ichino's findings, Italian GNP — $1.81 trillion in 2008 — doubles if family contributions are taken into account. "The inequality of well-being may not correspond to the economic inequality," he says. At the same time, Italy's focus on family can put a dent in civics. "Our kitchens are clean, but the streets are a mess," he says.

A Milan native, the 50-year-old Ichino received a doctorate at the Massachusetts Institution of Technology and is a professor of economics at the University of Bologna. He has published widely on issues such as social mobility, gender inequality and labor markets.

Before becoming as economist, he was sorely tempted to be an Alpine Guide

How did this book come about?

Italy's moved city-to-city in the 1950s.

Alberto Alesina and I have been friends for a long time. One evening we got to chatting about the earnings gap between men and women. We considered one solution might be to tax them at different rates.

The earnings gap is everywhere, but is particularly noticeable in Italy. We wondered whether it originated in the market or at home. If men and women in Italy had the same role inside the family, you might not have such a gap. If the benefits for a woman to enter the market aren't interesting enough, women will choose to say home.

So, if employers were perfect machines that hired people without knowing their gender, we would still have only few female managers or in positions in universities.

The matter of women and choice is a big part of the book. Isn't it a chicken or egg problem?

The division of roles in the family reflects a preference.

While some say this is how things are, don't touch it, others say that if the state offered more services, such as daycare or nursing homes, women would work more. They say the problem of women's discontent reflects the state's failure.

We don't think it's so obvious. Would Italians accept higher taxes to pay for such services? They don't seem to want to. They want an income that's high enough to keep the elderly at home.

The same for children. How many Italians would really put their children in daycare three months after birth?

Andrea Ichino

These decisions are as much emotional as a matter of economics, aren't they?

Yes, but it is a choice that Italians make. The Swedish choose the state as provider of these services.

Maybe Italians don't think the state can handle the job?

That's possible. But it could also be the opposite. Our sense is that cultural values and trust in the family are more deeply rooted than matters of state efficiency.

Economic and historical studies ... suggest that Italians prefer entrusting several roles to the family. The state is how it is because the Italians want it that way.

Is the state the only alternative to the family? What about the private sector?

That's another reason choice is involved. If there were demand for these services, someone would step in to this market. People who say these services don't exist because the state doesn't exist can't account for the fact the market doesn't offer them either.

From age three, all Italian children have the right to nursery school, which is more than in the UK or the United States.

So why is the rate of female employment so low here and higher in the U.S.? Frankly I am not convinced that if daycare centers were on every corner that Italian women would use them.

Tell me about reactions to the book?

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