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Aging Italy: Low Fertility and Societal Rigidities

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Low Fertility, Institutions, and their Policies

Abstract

For many decades, the Italian population has been characterized by increasing longevity, persistent low fertility, and fertility postponement. Italy is a country of many contradictions, as low fertility interplays—to a certain extent paradoxically—with strong family ties and values, high parental investment in child quality, and low female labor-market participation. This chapter offers reflections on the main institutional factors leading to Italy’s low and late fertility. I point out the features of the Italian context—in general not easily quantifiable or measurable—that plausibly represent elements of viscosity impeding a rapid and smooth process of family formation and transition to parenthood. The identification of social rigidities that make changes in reproductive behavior particularly difficult suggests possible policies to raise fertility in order to abate an unprecedented aging process.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    To vote for the Chamber of Deputies, citizens must be at least 18 years old, while to vote for the Senate they must be at least 25 years old.

  2. 2.

    Living apart together refers to couples that have an intimate relationship but live at separate addresses.

  3. 3.

    The definition of resident “foreign people” in Italy is linked to citizenship and not to place of birth. In the most recent census (2011), the foreign community accounted for about 7 % of the total population.

  4. 4.

    The first Italian law on medically assisted procreation, known as Law 40 and issued in 2004, has radically transformed Italy from what was perceived as an unregulated “wild west” of assisted-reproductive practice to a country with one of the most restrictive laws in Europe. In its original version, the law restricted ART to heterosexual infertile couples, established that no more than three embryos could be produced during any cycle, required that all embryos be implanted immediately, limited research on embryos, and banned cryopreservation of embryos, embryo donation, and surrogacy (Zanini 2011, 565–66). A series of court judgments abrogated some of these restrictions, as they are unconstitutional or in contrast with other norms, but the law on the whole is still in force.

  5. 5.

    The use of egg or sperm from an external donor.

  6. 6.

    In the sense that it has too many obligations and duties.

  7. 7.

    Typical permanent contracts guarantee the employee against firing and provide social protection, health and maternity leave, social-security contributions, and unemployment benefits in case of termination.

  8. 8.

    In 1997, the Treu Bill deregulated the labor market allowing “atypical contracts” (e.g., contratto a progetto), which were not only open ended but had lower social-security contributions, did not envisage any parental or sick leave compensation, and did not entitle workers to unemployment benefits (Garibaldi and Taddei 2013).

  9. 9.

    It was common in the past for young couples to reside with parental families, but this has now largely been replaced by residential proximity.

  10. 10.

    In Italy, flexibility is rare in the scheduling of work hours, the amount of hours worked, or the place of work. For instance, badge control is more common than control by results, and teleworking is very rare. The small average size of enterprises and the lack of diversity in management culture slow down the implementation of such measures.

  11. 11.

    As of 2012, Italy had the highest proportion of self-employed workers in the total workforce in Europe, at 30 %.

  12. 12.

    In Italy, there are 64 enterprises for every 1000 inhabitants, one of the highest proportions in Europe. These enterprises tend to be small—on average 3.9 workers per firm in the country as a whole and 2.8 in the south.

  13. 13.

    Actually, the law forbids an employer from firing a woman when she comes back to work after maternity leave until the child is two years old, but the illegal practice of obliging women to sign an undated letter of resignation when hired, to be used by the employer in case a woman becomes pregnant, is far from being abandoned in spite of recent efforts. Moreover, the proliferation of short-term contracts for young women allows employers simply not to renew a contract after childbirth.

  14. 14.

    Women unable to reduce their working hours after childbirth have an actual or perceived lower productivity on the job and face a negative wage gap with respect to otherwise similar childless women. A recent empirical study shows that Italian women experience a non-negligible wage penalty when they become mothers. This gap amounts to about €15 (US$16 as of 4 Aug 2015) a week for an average weekly wage of €360 (US$392) before childbearing. The average yearly wage growth is about 3 % lower for women after they become mothers (Pacelli et al. 2013).

  15. 15.

    Parents are required to pay a small fee (less than €100 (US$109) a year) at enrollment plus the cost of meals for children attending kindergarten on a full-time basis.

  16. 16.

    Overall, only one-half of municipalities offers childcare centers, and the regional differences are very large—from 22.5 % of municipalities offering childcare centers in the south to 76.3 % in the northeast. The proportion of the cost paid by parents also varies widely—from more than 22 % in the north to less than 9 % on the islands. The proportion of children attending a public childcare center varies from 2 % in Calabria to 27 % in Emilia Romagna.

  17. 17.

    For the most common form of childcare in each country after direct and indirect subsidies but before taxes and benefits.

  18. 18.

    This means that it is a weighted average with weekdays counted as 5/7 and weekend days as 2/7. To estimate weekly average working hours, we multiply the daily average by seven. For instance, working men spent 64 h and 52 min at work (including commute time and lunch and coffee breaks), while working women spent 52 h and 9 min.

  19. 19.

    For instance, in 2014, the monthly family allowance varied from €258 (US$281) for a family of four with an annual net income of less than €14,534 (US$15,806) to €0.03 (!) for a family of four with an annual net income of €77,625 (US$84,417).

  20. 20.

    Trentino-Alto Adige/Südtirol constitutes a special case of home rule guaranteed by the Italian constitution to five regions, acknowledging their independence in relation to legislation, administration, and finance, in order to take into account cultural differences and protect linguistic minorities. The region as a whole is nearly powerless, however. The powers guaranteed by the constitution are mostly exercised by the two autonomous provinces within the region, Provincia Autonoma di Trento and Provincia Autonoma di Bolzano- Südtirol, with regional institutions limited to a coordinating role. The two provinces have their own budgets (mainly based on taxes from their residents) to support education (from kindergarten through university), healthcare, social affairs, and infrastructure.

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Acknowledgments

This chapter is based on research funded by the EU’s Seventh Framework Program (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement no. 320116 for the Research Project on Families and Societies and from the University of Padova’s 2013 Research Program under grant agreement no. CPDA139158 for the Research Project on Italian Families between Tradition and Innovation: New Types, New Challenges, and New Opportunities. I acknowledge the valuable help of Antonella Guarneri who provided me with the most recent estimates of fertility indicators computed by ISTAT and also with useful suggestions. I also acknowledge the valuable contribution of Marcantonio Caltabiano who allowed me to use his updated estimates of fertility trends in northern and southern Italy in Fig. 2.

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  1. Department of Statistical Sciences, University of Padova, Padova, Italy

    Maria Letizia Tanturri

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  1. Maria Letizia Tanturri
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Correspondence to Maria Letizia Tanturri .

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  1. Department of Sociology, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, USA

    Ronald R. Rindfuss

  2. East-West Center, Honolulu, Hawaii, USA

    Minja Kim Choe

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Tanturri, M.L. (2016). Aging Italy: Low Fertility and Societal Rigidities. In: Rindfuss, R., Choe, M. (eds) Low Fertility, Institutions, and their Policies. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32997-0_9

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-32997-0_9

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