Denatality is the greatest problem of our time. A people who do not regenerate themselves by bringing children into the world grow old, lose vitality and in the long run die. Beginning in the 1960s, both to meet the need for labor essential to sustain economic development and to buffer the growing problem of denatality, several Western nations chose to open their doors to immigrants. The United Kingdom as well as the Netherlands and France welcomed immigrants from former colonies, Germany initially from Italy and later mainly from Turkey, and so on. While on the economic level the results have been positive, on the social level, the arrival of millions of men from vastly different cultures has been a disaster. In this article we will not deal with the coexistence of Europeans and non-European immigrants. We will focus on the demographic history of Italy to analyze the depth of the crisis. For more on the causes and consequences of denatality, immigration and incompatibility between different peoples, we refer to the essay-with the most up-to-date data- "La scomparsa dei popoli europei. Denatalità, immigrazione, declino" (Passaggio al Bosco, 2024).
A society in crisis
We will limit ourselves to summarily listing the main factors that have fueled the phenomenon of empty cradles: urbanism (between the end of the 19th century and the first decades of the 20th century we witness a progressive internal migration: rural dwellers migrate to larger urban centers. On average, women in cities have fewer children than women living in rural areas); the development of the welfare state gradually replaces children (the latter are no longer the labor to be employed in the fields or the “old age stick” of their parents); women's role in society changes (aiming for gender equality and independence, women aspire to careers, no longer consider it necessary to start a family, no longer the social pressure to do so); legalization of contraceptives, abortion; men and women reach economic stability later and later (also due to longer cycles of study), this implies having children later, this inevitably implies having fewer children or worse, not having children; fear of losing jobs in case of pregnancy; the cost of children or lack of a network of suitable facilities, pushes many couples not to have children.
The “ twilight of the family” is evidenced by the collapse of marriages: we went from over 300,000 in 1981 to 184,000 in 2019; divorces went from 17,134 in 1971 to 79,917 in 2019; legal separations went from 11,796 in 1971 to 66,662 in 2019. In 2022, children born out of wedlock constituted 41.5 percent of the total.
On the effects of denatality and possible solutions to the drama of empty cradles, there are different points of view: from those who deny that denatality is a problem, to those who believe they will solve everything by bestowing subsidies. There are those who claim-very superficially-that “if there will be fewer of us, what is the problem? There will be more welfare for the few who remain."
Exactly the opposite is true. Depopulation does not uniformly erode all age groups: the population declines because there are insufficient live births to replace previous generations, consequently the proportion of elderly increases. How can there be welfare if one-third of the population is over 65 and not working? Who supports welfare if there is a physical shortage of workers? Someone has the ready answer: immigrants.
Aging: a structural fact
Here, now, we will debunk data in hand the narrative that immigrants pay us (and will pay our pensions); not only because this narrative does not hold up economically, but also because, taking the temporary economic balance of immigration for positive, there are “non-economic” aspects to consider: coexistence, security, physical survival.
Population aging is a process with which we will obligatorily have to reckon, not only because - as demographers De Rose and Rosina write - it is “unprecedented in human history. In pre-industrial societies only a limited minority arrived at old age and arrived there in generally very poor health. Moreover, high birth rates gave preponderant weight to younger generations. In particular, the proportion of people over sixty among the planet's inhabitants has never historically been more than one in twenty (in some less developed countries it is still below that level). The proportion has risen in recent decades to more than one in ten in the early years of the twenty-first century, with predictions of exceeding one in five by 2050 (a value already exceeded in the most developed countries)”; but also because it is ”irreversible (or inexorable) because the growth in the number of the proportion of the elderly in contemporary societies is a direct consequence of people living progressively longer and having fewer children than in the past. Unless, therefore, we return to the fertility and mortality levels of the ancient regime, the presence in the population of a high proportion of anagraphically mature people should be considered not only an entirely new feature with respect to human history, but also one that is destined to become structural and remain permanently in the future."
Restructure society or resign ourselves to decline
So, not only must society be restructured, tailor-made to support a substantial proportion of the elderly; but, more importantly, the state must have as its primary goal an increase in the birth rate of natives. The consequences of population aging are diverse and, if not addressed with radical measures, catastrophic. In the medium to long term, an aging population means greater pressure on the pension system: spending that will absorb 16.2 percent of Italy's GDP in 2025 in the face of a decrease in the labor force: the number of contributing workers will decrease to a ratio of 1: 1 between the working and inactive population in 2050; rising cost of health care and assistance expenses that will burden small families; an aging population is vulnerable, has more difficulty coping with emergencies, is unable to defend itself; cannot have geopolitical ambitions, is destined to live under the military umbrella of a major power; most importantly, has limited time to reverse demographic course: by mid-century, women of childbearing age may be numerically insufficient to ensure an adequate annual number of births to guarantee the perpetuation of the Italian people. Beyond that limit, barring eugenic solutions involving the use of technology, we can only accept decline and make (our) physical demise less painful.
With this article we want to emphasize the seriousness of Italy's demographic decline. These are decisive years for our country. The imperative is to act quickly. Procrastination pushes us violently toward the abyss. [1 - continued]
Sources:
De Rose-Rosina, Introduzione alla demografica. Analisi e interpretazione delle dinamiche di popolazione, EGEA, Milano, 2022, p. 146.
In Italia spesa pensione nel 2025 al 16,2% Pil, top paesi Ocse, confesercentinazionale.it, 13.12.2023.
A maverick of nonconformist thought, he writes for several newspapers and blogs. He is interested in demographic dynamics, history, geopolitics and "fashionable ideologies."
Italiano 
English
Scrivi un commento