Abstract
While barely 10% of Italian births were to unmarried mothers in 1999, by 2019 this figure reached 34%. A similar change had occurred decades before in other European countries, but in Italy, a country known for its religiosity and strong attachment to familial values, this substantial and rapid increase was uncertain and even surprising. Analyzing Census data from 2001 to 2019, I decompose this rise into increased nonmarital fertility, decreased marital fertility, and change in the fraction of women married and unmarried. I show that between 2001 and 2011, the rise in the Nonmarital Fertility Ratio (NFR) mainly reflected the increased nonmarital fertility, while between 2011 and 2019, the rise reflected both the growth in the fraction of women who were unmarried and a decline in marital fertility. Shifts in population composition of reproductive age women over time, such as the higher proportion of older women or the higher fraction of foreign women, did not explain these changing patterns. Patterns of nonmarital fertility differed across regions, with earlier and faster adoption in Northern and Central Italy. These demographic patterns are consistent with a generational shift in attitudes towards a greater acceptance of nonmarital births.
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Notes
Even if not exactly overlapping, the terms immigrants (immigrati) and the term foreigners (stranieri) are used almost interchangeably both in Italian everyday language and in previous studies about migrants’ fertility (Billari and Dalla Zuanna, 2011; Decimo, 2015; Impicciatore et al., 2020; Vitali and Billari, 2017). The persistence of the principle of ius sanguinis (individuals are considered Italian only if they have one Italian parent or an ancestor, up to the third degree) makes the population of foreigners well representative of foreign-born individuals and legal immigrants (first or second generation).
Despite the methodological differences in data collection, Istat has consistently conducted quality evaluations and corrections on all Censuses, mostly based on the comparison with registers and administrative data. Data from the three Censuses is comparable, and they have already been used by analysts and Istat itself to analyze population-level changes over time, as well as to reconstruct inter-census populations.
It is reasonable to consider that nonmarital births are not restricted to births to cohabiting couples: unplanned pregnancies and single motherhood are nonmarital births as well. However, precise statistics on the share of cohabiting versus married couples are not available, nor is the share of nonmarital births occurring within or outside co-residing unions. Previous studies have shown that most of the increase in nonmarital childbearing occurring in other Western countries has arisen from increases in births to cohabiting parents rather than to mothers living alone (Kennedy and Bumpass 2008; Perelli-Harris et al., 2010; Thomson and Eriksson 2013), and the increase in nonmarital births is a good proxy for increases in cohabiting parenthood (Thomson et al., 2019). For the Italian context, two observations support this same conclusion. First, according to national statistics (Istat Population and Families database), unmarried single mothers living alone with their children constitute a very small percentage of the female population of reproductive ages (less than 3%). Moreover, over the last 10 years, the percentage of single mothers who are either separated, divorced, or widowed (compared to never married) remained around 85%, and that of those who are 35 years or older remained around 70%. This suggests that the phenomenon of single motherhood due to unplanned pregnancies to young never married women is relatively uncommon in Italy, and it didn’t undergo significant changes during the decades considered. Most births to unmarried mothers likely occur to partnered women, and drive the changes analyzed in this paper.
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Acknowledgements
I thank my advisor Susan Short for her continuous support and guidance. I also thank Zhenchao Qian for his useful suggestions. I am grateful to the Population Studies and Training Center at Brown University, which receives funding from the NIH, for training support (T32 HD007338 NICHD grant) and for general support (P2C HD041020 NIH grant).
Funding
This work was supported by funding from the NIH, for training support (T32 HD007338 NICHD grant) and for general support (P2C HD041020 NIH grant).
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Fanelli, E. Italian Nonmarital Fertility Ratio: Components of an Unexpected Rise. Popul Res Policy Rev 42, 79 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-023-09825-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-023-09825-8