Italy loses children and loses women to give birth to them. In 2017, Istat certifies, almost 10.000 fewer were born than the previous year. But in just a few years, 900 women have been "lost". These are the data released by the new demographic estimates and they are frightening. Let's look at births: they stopped at an all-time low of 464, 2% less than in 2016, when there were 473. We were already low, we went down even further: it is the ninth consecutive decrease since 2008, the year in which 577 children were born in Italy.
However, the Italians' propensity to procreate has not changed: the average number of children per woman, equal to 1,34, is unchanged compared to 2016, Istat still specifies. These are apparently contradictory numbers but the underlying truth – banal and worrying at the same time – is this: births have been decreasing in Italy for more or less forty years. And in this period the number of women of childbearing age has been steadily declining. So today we have 900 fewer than in 2008 and more or less 200 fewer than in 2016. Fewer women, fewer children, but that's not all.
The other side of this dangerous bleeding is that the average age of fertile women in ten years has risen. And so Italians become mothers later and later: in 1980 at 27,5 years, in 2017 at 31,8 years.
Fewer women, older people, fewer children: these are the terms of the demographic equation that projected into the future means fewer young people, less workforce and ever higher spending on pensions and health care. So fewer resources for young people, fewer prospects, fewer children and so on.
What can be done to break this vicious circle? Certainly something can be done. Looking at the same data released by Istat, in fact, it can be seen that the decrease in the resident population (basically the Italians and foreigners who live here on a permanent basis) does not affect all areas of the country equally. If the national average is -1,6 per thousand, in Bolzano the population grows by 7,1 per thousand. In nearby Trento it rises by 2 per thousand and in Tuscany it decreases, but much less than the national average (-0,5 per thousand). But above all, the Province of Bolzano was confirmed as the most prolific region in the country in 2017 with 1,75 children per woman, followed rather at a distance by the Province of Trento (1,50), the Valle d'Aosta (1,43) and from Lombardy (1,41). Conversely, the areas of the country where fertility is lower are all in the South, in particular Basilicata (1,23), Molise (1,22) and Sardinia (1,09).
We can also reason on the fact that society has changed and that young people are perhaps more fearful (or perhaps less irresponsible) in facing the role of parent than in the past. But the impression is that the falling birth rate can be treated with a satisfactory income, with adequate services and with life models that are able to reconcile work and family. A theme dear to millions of women who work and are not sufficiently helped by their companions but also by kindergartens, schools, efficient working hours and in harmony with the great and wonderful commitment to raise children.
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