The province defying Italy’s birth dearth
The province defying Italy’s birth dearth
Thirty years of child-friendly policies
In March, the Italian equivalent of the ONS, ISTAT, reported that Italy’s total fertility rate (TFR) – the average number of children per woman – had declined to 1.2. Nobody was surprised – Italy’s birth rate has declined almost every year since 2010. In fact in 2020, the Italian population declined by 384,000. That’s like if all the residents of a town bigger than Coventry disappeared. Yet there is one part of Italy that is consistently defying the nation’s birth dearth.
Welcome to South Tyrol
South Tyrol (officially Bolzano - South Tyrol) is a wealthy province in northeast Italy where over 60% of the population speak German as their first language. Ruled by the Austro-Hungarian Empire until 1918, it was part of a territorial bribe to entice Italy to enter World War I on the side of the Triple Entente. It’s mountainous and shares a border with Switzerland and Austria. Local specialities include knödel dumplings and apple strudel.
In 2022 South Tyrol’s TFR was 1.64, significantly above the national Italian TFR of 1.2. The province also has a higher fertility rate than any region of Germany (though a few come very close to it), a country with which it shares much culturally, and also than any region in the bordering nations of Austria or Switzerland. In the map below you can see just what an outlier South Tyrol is in its part of Europe.
Though South Tyrol has not always outperformed Italy’s national TFR, it has been doing so for at least twenty years. In the 1990, South Tyrol’s fertility rate was similar to that of Italy’s as a whole, running slightly above the national rate. But since then, the province slowly started to pull away and has consistently stayed ahead of all other regions since 2010, as shown below. Incredibly, considering the decline in fertility Italy has witnessed, the province’s TFR is actually higher now than it was in the mid-1990s.
Does South Tyrol’s origins as an Austrian province have something to do with its different fertility trajectory? Between 1960s and 1990s South Tyrol did follow the fertility trajectory of Austria’s baby boom and bust, putting it ahead of its northern Italian neighbours, but still significantly behind the fecund southern Italy. Yet since the 1990s, the trajectory of South Tyrol also diverged from that of Austria, placing it firmly ahead of its northern neighbour too.
So what is South Tyrol’s secret? Is it a haven of the ‘traditional family values’ that Italian PM Meloni argues are key to ending the Italian birth dearth? No. Like much of northern Italy, the province has very high female labour market participation. It also has the second smallest employment rate gap between men and women in Italy, and is lower in religiosity than many other Italian regions (though Italy as a whole is one of Europe’s most religious countries). Instead, South Tyrol’s success is plausibly down to an astute and forward thinking policy programme.
Child-friendly policies make the difference.
South Tyrol is one half of Trentino-Bolzano-South Tyrol, an autonomous region. This gives it more freedom to set family-friendly policies than non-autonomous areas of Italy. Parents receive 200 euros a month, per child, until they turn three. That’s in addition to a yearly payment of 1,900 euros from the Italian government.
All parents registering a newborn in the province also receive a free ‘Ben Arrivato Bebé’ (Welcome Baby) package that includes information, some baby clothes, baby books, a voucher for more baby books, and a ‘Euregio Family Pass’ which entitles families to cheaper public transport across South Tyrol. There’s a Family+ card for parents with three or more children, which parents can use for discounts in shops including supermarkets. There is flexible, semi-informal childcare available via the ‘Casa Bimbo’ system, which allows local teachers to turn their homes into small nurseries.
In short, South Tyrol has strived over the course of decades – this policy programme began in the 1980s – to show its support for parents and make life in the province as easy as it can for families.
Remember, the factors that have caused Italy’s fertility to decline are likely at work in South Tyrol too, making it more difficult for young people to establish themselves and consider starting a family. This makes what South-Tyrol has achieved all the more impressive.
Experts variously quoted in connection with South Tyrol’s consistent out-performance of national fertility averages say that consistency is the key ingredient in the province’s success. After all, the South-Tyrolean local government has spent years proving again and again that it is there for families. There for them with dependable child payments. There for them with predictably affordable and high-quality childcare.
Conclusion
We believe that South Tyrol is first a hopeful and positive example of the tremendous impact that policymakers can have when they implement policies that improve parents’ lives and make it easier for everyone to start and grow their families.
Second, it is a lesson in consistency and stability. Parents aren’t demanding the government provide them with robo-nannies. Instead, they respond to modest and practical improvements to their lives, and clear and constant signals of support from their local and national government.
By Phoebe Arslanagić-Little & Anvar Sarygulov
Cover image by Fabio Antoniazzi, licensed under CC BY 3.0.
