Evidence from past economic crises indicates that recessions often affect men's and women's employment differently, with a greater impact on male-dominated sectors. The current COVID-19 crisis presents novel characteristics that have affected economic, health and social phenomena over wide swaths of the economy. Social distancing measures to combat the spread of the virus, such as working from home and

We investigate changes in older individuals' financial fragility as they stand on the verge of retirement. Using data from the Health and Retirement Study (HRS), we compare how debt has changed for successive cohorts of people age 56–61. Our analysis shows that recent older Americans close to retirement hold more debt, and hence face greater financial insecurity, than earlier generations. This is primarily due to having bought more expensive homes with smaller down payments. We discuss possible policy implications.

We investigate the attitudes to entrepreneurship of Italian households, focusing on the importance of digital skills and financial literacy as potentially relevant factors shaping entrepreneurial entry. We put the gender focus to our analysis to detect whether, and to what extent, women and men differ in their propensity to run a business. We carry out our research by using a sample of the Bank of Italy SHIW dataset for the year 2008 and 2010. Our findings suggest a strong heterogeneity, between men and women, of the importance of digital skills and financial literacy as entrepreneurial drivers. Results show that the impact of financial literacy on the probability of being an entrepreneur is significant, but only for men. Digital skills increase the probability of being entrepreneur with a bigger effect for men than for women.