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Gian Carlo Blangiardo, President of Istat
Gian Carlo Blangiardo, 71, demographer, president of Istat since 2019, noticed an oddity: nine months after the arrival of the Chernobyl toxic cloud, in May 1986, the birth rate in Italy fell (temporarily) by 10%. compared to the norm for that period. Italians reacted to the uncertainty and fear by postponing procreation options.
President, will Covid unleash the same effect, perhaps multiplying it?
In Italy we have had a trend that has been maintained since 2009, with a decrease of approximately a quarter of births since then. Already January 2020, before the pandemic, has a drop of 1.5% compared to a year before. We will see in the December data how much fear will have affected, starting in March. Uncertainty at work and difficulties in daily life are also important, causing people to put off having a child until late. Making difficult predictions, but I fear that in 2021 we could fall below 400,000 births.
There were more than a million in 1964, 576,000 in 2008.
It should be noted that the decline also affects the foreign population. Immigration today brings 62,000 births a year, after reaching 80,000. But beyond the economic factors – the crisis, the pandemic – in Italy there is above all a structural effect, because the number of people of childbearing age is decreasing. Those born at the height of the baby boom are now 56 years old. Generations of reproductive age will be increasingly restricted.
How to react?
We must reconcile work and motherhood, with greater parental involvement.
More paternity leave?
There is also a cultural aspect. We have always deceived ourselves that it should be the State that solves the problem with a bond, an aid, a law. Instead, other actors must also participate in this real emergency: non-profit organizations or companies, which can offer the childcare service to employees. Not paternalism, an investment. Only now are we realizing the problem, we begin to understand that if we do nothing, the issue becomes truly problematic for well-being.
What do you mean?
Today we have 33 people over 65 for every 100 people of working age. In thirty or forty years this number doubles, so that the proportion of pensions also doubles in proportion to the gross domestic product. At that point, we double the cake, but we know it’s not that simple …
Or will there be no money for school or health care?
… or else we should cut other things, inevitable. This is the war between the poor that must be avoided. Now there is some awareness of the problem. But also resistance to taking responsibility for doing something to fix it.
Is Covid reversing the paradigm that in Italy life expectancy improves more in the North than in the South?
Certainly, there is a very strong variability in the territories. In Rome or Agrigento the mortality this year falls compared to 2019, while in Bergamo or the Val d’Aosta, naturally, the opposite occurs. Of course, life expectancy always reflects the most recent data, but only a statistical projection. That said, the Covid effect is expected to produce a dramatic number of deaths, but not huge by historical comparison. They are not the 600,000 deaths from Spanish fever, to understand.
What numbers do you have in mind?
We did some simulations, imagining different scenarios. They range from 40,000 more deaths than in 2019 to 80,000, but in the latter case only with a second wave that increases the risk of death in the elderly by 50%.
The central scenario of 60,000 more deaths?
In theory, the s. But the second wave, if there is one, hopefully not, will be less harsh from the point of view of lethality. We discovered how to better manage this phenomenon. At Istat we are working, with the Istituto Superiore di Sanit and some universities, to establish a monitoring system that allows outbreaks to be quickly identified and notified. Having 40,000 more deaths during the previous year is also dramatic, of course, but it would still be less than what happened in 1956 or even 2015 compared to previous years.
The flight of young people abroad is slowing the economy. Can reduced mobility due to Covid help with this?
Before Covid, the country often couldn’t give young people a future. He stupidly invested in them, trained them and gave them to the rest of the world. I also have a daughter in London. Now young people are at home, but only because mobility has stopped. The bet will be to be able to create conditions that allow them to remain even after reconstruction. Otherwise, they will go to rebuild the other countries.
Employment figures during the pandemic show that young people always pay.
They are the least protected groups, who assume all the flexibility. I think the magic word is opportunity. Maybe with slightly better rules not to shoot or explode, but to give everyone a chance to find the right place.
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