Genovese, Antonio (2025) Youth Inclusion through Public Policy: Evidence on Labor Market and Cultural Incentives in Italy. [Tesi di dottorato]

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Abstract

Young people today face unprecedented barriers to entering and fully participating in eco nomic and civic life. Across advanced economies, they experience persistently higher unem ployment rates, precarious employment conditions, and low wage growth. At the same time, youth disengagement frompolitical processes and cultural life has raised concerns about long term social cohesion and democratic participation. In response, policymakers have introduced a range of targeted interventions aimed at improving youth inclusion– seeking to facilitate la bor market entry, promote human capital development, and foster cultural participation. This dissertation investigates the effectiveness of such policies and their wider economic and social implications, focusing on the Italian context as a rich environment of recent policy experimen tation. The thesis brings together three empirical studies that use high-quality administrative data andquasi-experimentalmethodstoassesshowdifferenttypesofyouth-orientedpoliciesshape economic and civic outcomes. The first two papers analyze the introduction of a large payroll tax incentive in 2018 that reduced labor costs for hiring workers under the age of thirty-five without prior permanent employment. The first study examines the policy’s impact on em ploymentdynamicsandjobstabilityamongyoungworkers,documentingsignificantincreases in youth hiring and transitions to permanent contracts, but limited effects on wages. The sec ond paper complements this analysis by shifting attention to the firm side, exploring how differences in firms’ exposure to the policy influenced the distribution of benefits. It highlights the role of market power and firm heterogeneity in mediating the incidence of tax incentives and in shaping employment and production responses. The third paper moves beyond the labor market to explore another dimension of youth inclu sion: participation in cultural and political life. Exploiting local variation in the exposure to a 2016 cultural consumption voucher for eighteen-year-olds, the study shows that economic transfers targeted at young voters can generate modest yet persistent electoral gains for the incumbent government, without significantly affecting voter turnout. These results suggest that while such transfers may foster short-term political alignment, they do little to strengthen civic participation. Together, these three studies provide a comprehensive picture of how economic and cultural policies influence the integration of younger generations into society. By examining both labor market incentives and broader measures of social and political engagement, the dissertation contributes to understanding the multifaceted nature of youth inclusion and the potential — and limits — of policy interventions aimed at fostering it.

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