Harnessing the Potential of Big Data for Understanding the Impact of COVID-19 on Intimate Partner Violence in Italy
Despite the volume of studies leveraging big data to explore socio-demographic phenomena, we still know little about the intersection of digital information and the social problem of intimate partner violence (IPV). This is an important knowledge gap as IPV remains a pressing public-health concern worldwide, with 35% of women having experienced IPV over their lifetime and cases rising dramatically in the wake of global crises such as the current pandemic. This study addresses the question of whether online data from Google Trends and Twitter might help reach these ``hard-to-reach” populations using Italy as a case-study. We ask the following questions: Can digital traces help predict instances of IPV in Italy? Is their predictive power weaker or stronger in the aftermath of crises such as COVID-19? Preliminary results suggest that digital data using selected keywords positively predict actual calls to helplines with their predictive power being stronger in post-crises periods.
With: Selin Koksal, Luca Maria Pesando, and Asli Ebru Sanliturk
The Unintended Consequences of Mexico City Policy Enactment on Maternal and Infant Health Around the World
In this paper, we focus on the unintended consequences of the so-called Mexico City policy (MCP henceforth). Known by its opponents as the global gag rule, this policy concerns US government funding for healthcare organizations that provide family planning services around the world. We show that, by restricting access to family planning programs and to modern contraceptive methods, MCP makes it harder for people (especially women) to get information and support on sexual and reproductive health with consequences in terms of maternal and infant mortality as well as HIV prevalence around the globe with worse expected outcomes for women from low SES background.
With: Kerim Can Kavakli
The Paradox of Parenthood and Happiness: Exploring the Role of the Brain
While both the conventional wisdom and the Second Demographic Transition theory suggest that having children is rewarding for individuals and increases their life satisfaction and happiness, the empirical literature across different disciplines has not yet found a clear answer on neither the direction nor the magnitude of the association between childbearing and happiness. Here we explore a possible mechanism that might explain the association between parenthood and happiness: the neuro-anatomical changes occurring to parental brains when transitioning into parenthood and the role played by empathy. After birth and two years afterwards women show
reduced gray matter volumes in regions subserving social cognition and in particular the amygdala, insula, precuneus, superior
temporal and medial prefrontal areas. Also fathers experience changes in their brain, although of smaller size.
These changes also affect affective domains, such as empathy and social emotions. At the same time, the literature documents that emotional distress and the perception of other people's pain activate neural structures (including the anterior cingulate cortex, anterior insula, and the amygdala) that are also involved in the direct experience of pain. As a result, we expect to find a negative relationship between parenting and happiness mediated by an increase in the ability to feel others' pain. We test this hypothesis by leveraging the richness of the \textit{UK Biobank Dataset} including the collection of genome-wide genetic data and resting and task-based fMRI of around 100000 participants aged 40--69 years old. Through the developed world, the high level of childlessness and the decrease in family size among those having children are timely and pressing policy issues. The fact that, in many although not all industrialized societies \citep{glass2016parenthood}, parents report lower levels of happiness than childless adults might possibly fuel the perception that having children is not rewarding thus reducing the desire to become parents. Understanding the reasons behind the usually observed negative correlation between parenthood and happiness is, therefore, crucial.
With: Nicola Barban, Carlo Reverberi, and Maria Sironi
