Cultural Integration in Europe: the Italian Context

We explore economic and cultural integration patterns for different immigrant groups in Italy, from first to second generations and across age cohorts. We produce descriptive statistics regarding the differences of immigrants with respect to natives in terms of education, employment, female participation rates, marriage, divorce, exogamous marriage rates, and completed fertility rates. Our analysis does not show evidence of slow integration patterns for immigrants into Italy, though inter-marriage rates between immigrants and natives are very low. Severe data limitations however suggest caution in the interpretation of these results. We are grateful to Tito Boeri for comments and to Eleonora Pierucci for excellent research assistance. *New York University, NBER, and IZA, [email protected] **La Sapienza University of Rome, EIEF and IZA, [email protected]