2021/13 | LEM Working Paper Series | ||||||||||||||||
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Platform Work and Economic Insecurity: Evidence from Italian Survey Data |
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Valeria Cirillo, Dario Guarascio and Zachary Parolin |
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Keywords | |||||||||||||||||
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Platform work; non-standard work; economic insecurity.
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JEL Classifications | |||||||||||||||||
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J40, J80, J81
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Abstract | |||||||||||||||||
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The emergence of the platform economy has served as a defining feature of increasing
fragmented labour markets in modern economies. Recent research on platform work,
however, has struggled to quantify the socio-economic conditions of platform workers
relative to other occupation groups. Moreover, it remains unclear if the socio-economic
disadvantages that platform workers are likely to face are primarily channeled through
lower incomes or their more precarious working conditions. This study uses representative
survey data of platform workers in Italy to investigate their size, composition, and socio-economic conditions relative to individuals in other occupations. Our findings reveal that
platform workers tend to be students and of younger age, but are diverse with respect
to sex, educational attainment, and native-born status. We find that platform workers
face greater economic insecurity relative to all other occupation classes. Strikingly, they
also feature a rate of economic insecurity that is not significantly different from that
of unemployed adults. Moreover, we find that the higher levels of insecurity are not
primarily channeled through lower incomes; instead, higher rates of insecurity persist even
when taking family incomes into account, suggesting that the precarity and volatility of
platform work matter as much as income differences in shaping economic disadvantage.
Results hold under analyses that account for selection into platform work. Our findings
carry important consequences for understandings of the intensity and sources of socio-economic disadvantage of individuals engaged in platform work.
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