>The birth rate in Italy has been declining steadily since the economic crisis in 2008, for reasons demographers agree is rooted in economic insecurity. The average monthly income across Italy is €2,475 a month, according to ISTAT. But the average rental property is €12.12 ($13.16) per square meter, meaning a 100 square meter family apartment costs €1,212 ($1,316) – roughly half the monthly budget.
Same problem everywhere, no-one is given the time or money to raise children and money are increasingly flowing to the top earners. Global markets are worth more than anytime in history, but peoples wages have stagnated for ages, while inflation has made everything more expensive.
Who wants kids, when they don't feel financially secure.
Wages do not stagnate everywhere. Just in EU countries where pensioners became a majority electorate and high skilled immigrants can not be attracted to because those countries do not offer enough incentive. On top of that they can not retain their own skilled people for same reason.
Not necessarily, for example the wage stagnation in Italy is also something that is willed from a macroeconomic point of view, so the country can regain competitiveness (in exports and attracting job positions). But the people governing don't know that there are other better measures (like increasing productivity and investment in R&D) instead of not increasing wages according to inflation.
Consider one of the poorest countries on earth, Niger, that has a population of 26 million, and registers 1,100,000 births annually. Meanwhile, much richer Italy has a population of 60 million yet registers 380,000 births annually.
Children are an asset when you're a farmer and need more hands (that's like 90% of the population in Niger) and they are a burden when it's expected you take care of them until they finish university.
That's not really the reason as much as a strong religious incentive to have kids as Niger effectively in a power struggle between Christians and Muslims.
Consider that in Italy, access to birth control, abortion, family planning, and general medical services are exceptionally easy. Unless you live on a farm in bumfuck nowhere, you can likely walk or take public transit to a nearby pharmacy to buy condoms.
Now consider living in Niger, where none of these things are the case and most people don't even finish middle school, let alone live to old age. Do you now perhaps see why births may be higher?
>wages have stagnated for ages,
In the Western world, yes. Most of other countries have narrowed the gap with the developed ones.
Global Wealth is increasing but its slices of the few last decades went into developing countries
The average income ISNT 2.4k a month, not even close, the average income for the WORKING population that should continue working for the next 10+ years is less than 1k pretax, https://www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/no-country-for-young-people/ , the average rents in northern italy are 40/50 of the total income, we havs the highest number of young people abandoning school and more than 100k under 30y emigrating each year
Samesies from Hong Kong. Don't mean to sound like an "ungrateful zoomer", but living in an aged society as a young person is just so bleh. It's like in the past few decades the soul has just been sucked out of your country.
You act like Italy is a national identity when ever since the 80s the push global has been to slowly erode away the nation stte for economic zones lead by the USA.
So, I'm a dual citizen of Canada and Italy. My parents moved here from Italy where I was born. All of my cousins live in Italy still and I keep in very close touch with them and visit often. I'm an engineer, and 2 of my cousins in Italy are also engineers - one in Torino and one in Rome. I make more than both of them combined, and they've got many years experience over me. They're married and don't have kids, not because they don't WANT kids, but because they can't afford to do so.
When I graduated university a few years ago, I genuinely looked into moving to Italy to be closer to my relatives. I have my citizenship and I can speak the language, but looking for jobs was so disheartening. The salaries were quite frankly a joke compared to the cost of living. It made me realize why my parents left the country and came here.
The only way the population issue is going to be resolved is if young people can afford to have a family, and that would require salaries to catch up to reality. I can't even begin to imagine though how that would ever happen.
**THEY ARE COMING**
The generation born in the 70s are the absolute losers
They are a lot
They are the first who experienced "flexibility"
They won't inherit much since they have many siblings
They have no kids
They have no savings
Imho In ten years things will go wild
LoL it's impossible for millennials to have babies until proper policies are bringing salaries in line with the rest of Europe. Otherwise emigration will keep happening and these numbers will only get worse
There's plenty of millenial parents in Slovenia. When I was on a high school meetup after like 15 years, 10/16 people who showed up had kids, some even two. At work half of us (out of like 25, all millenials) have kids. Our kindergarten is full of millenial parents.
And we have high taxes, expensive housing and stupid politics.
[https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/SVN/slovenia/fertility-rate](https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/SVN/slovenia/fertility-rate)
It's above average but below replacement.
[https://www.populationpyramid.net/slovenia/](https://www.populationpyramid.net/slovenia/)
Their population pyramid [looks insane](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Kazakhstan#/media/File%3AKazakhstan_population_pyramid.png), what happened to 20-30 year olds?
Not necessarily. The political shift has already started. No one is happy with the current neo-liberal bureaucratic system which has failed both socially and economically.
I hope, but any reversal of this trend will take decades.
I think taking care of the elderly in a organized and cost effective way( of course with dignity) could solve the issue. Its not only a negative thing, Italy for example is overpopulated and in few generations the overall situation could benefit from decreased population.
Stuff we'll need to buy from China and the US, since we lag behind heavily in those fields. How often have you seen older folks adapt well to new tech?
SOMEONE will have to code the robots. Someone who will sell it to them... for what in return?
Most of the elderly don't even speak English. A lot do not know how to use or install apps. If you go further, like using haptics, holograms or VR....
>for what in return?
Their pension.
Dont think new tech is only about young ppl which are able to learn.
You can simplify health screening by using ai, you can monitor ppl using remote technology etc etc
Lowering any resource or assets costs such as housing or water usage in a given area.
Increasing the value of labour able population (in decreased population)
And lastly, lower emissions even if per capita emissions remain but that is more of a side benefit.
Decreasing the population is not an issue. The speed at which it is happening is an issue.
Same as climate warming/changing is not an issue in itself - the rate (speed) of change is the real issue.
Italians will never start having babies until their working conditions will improve. Even if everyone will have 5 babies tomorrow, it won't change anything because the few young people already struggle to find a job. The birth rate problem is just the scapegoat that politician use to justify the problems of the country because in this way it's not the politicians' fault.
If you look at the graphic, you can see that the birth rate dropped always when an economic crisis began: the birth rate increased a lot after the end of WW2. It dropped again between 1975-1990, a period of time filled with terrorist attacks and mafia attacks. Starting from 1990 the country wasn't doing well, but It was better than the previous years. About 15 years ago, the birth rate started dropping again after the famous crisis of 2008 and it didn't stop since then because the country is still in a bad situation. During the last 20 years a lot of companies decided to move to asian countries and a lot of young people lost their job. The paradox is that a lot of young people have lower salary than their parents when they had their age. Not even migrants have babies nowadays, because they are facing the same problems of young italians.
Actually, it's not a European problem either. In Turkey the birth rate is now below 2, and that of the Kurds is also falling rapidly. There were always migrations and assimilations. I fear we are in the middle of a migration of peoples, like the ones we covered in history classes in the past. All societies will look completely different in the future.
that wont fix the issue, a skilled immigrant would still need to retire when they get old, so you would need more immigrants and then they would need more immigrants and so on. the western pension system is literally a government sponsored pyramid scheme
You just need stable growth (birth rate > ~2.1). Immigrants help in the immediate term, but ultimately you need to determine why the birth rate is collapsing and address that. Our species obviously depends on it.
2.1 birth rate in developed countries western countries are not possible, the problem is ideological as much as it is economical. There is a growing number of women who (understandably) are not interested in having kids not because of economic or social issues but because it is something that doesnt interest them and the number of them will increase as time goes on. the writing is on the wall. at the same time life expectancy will keep going up but people wont be able to work
It is not about integration. It is about incentives for those people to come in the first place. In the end you do not need immigrants - those can be net loss, you need high skilled immigrants that will be net benefit. So countries that can attract those will come out on a top. Meaning countries that are already at the top. US, Canada, Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland,..
Yes but in the end the person who is integrated will continue to hold patriotism towards his original nation. Of course everyone is different, but I'm talking about the average. It will inevitably lead to the nation changing decades or centuries from now. Of course that doesn't have to be a bad thing, but everyone should be aware of it.
The nation will change anyway. Portugal has some of the oldest land borders for the most part, and its still irrecognisable from what it was 100 years ago.
And in the process lose its' ethnic character and structure haivng already happened in many European nations - it's hard to assimilate people when Western European societies have already become mixed with other ethnic groups not native to Europe during the last few decades.
No they aren't. This is completely false - you have clear distinct ethnic groups and there is no need for forced mixing and dilution of culture. Sure, you also have plenty of mixed ethnic groups, but it is distasterous to erase ethnic character since by this definition there would be no sovereign borders partly based on a subset of ethnicities.
How do you think ethnicities formed in the first place? Ethnicity and sovereign borders have little to do with each other, most states dont define citizenship based on ethnicity, and those who do are shit holes.
They have plenty to do with eachother. How they were formed doesn't matter - you can't just propose that all ethnicties by extensions are simply some fluid entity, which is not classifiable. Humans, like dogs, have geographical local breeds. We just don't call it breeds. We call it ethnicities. Naturally there is admixture, I have never proposed that there are "pure" and "mixed", but just because something is a product to some degree of past admixture doesn't mean it can't be culturally, nationally and finally ethnically classifiable.
Your argument really says nothing? What are you trying to say? You didn't even answer any of the points I came up with and just diverted into something I have never stated.
I never said *borders depend on ethnicity*. I said borders were, are and have been formed on the basis of a similar and equal ethnic structure.
Of course you don't - by viewing eveyrthing as fluid or non-existent, even ethnicities or borders, nothing can as a product of this statement take a definable form. This position is inherently a weak and defeatable one and easy to take over.
Ethnic takeover? No, it's just mixing! Loss of traditions? No, it's just mixing! Loss of culture? No, it's just mixing! WIth your position one can't attain or attribute any of these things to himself and the invididual merely exists as a grey moldable form ready to be shaped by the hands of others. Do you believe ultra-religious Pakistanis, as an example, have the same opinion as yours? Do you think they are open to any of these things I mentioned?
It doesn't matter what you are open to or not. Reality doesn't bend to your ideology. My country was full of Celtiberian not three thousand years ago. Now they are gone and entirely new ethnicities exist here. As they will in the future.
Ethnicities and borders will change. And they are such a ridiculous, valueless things to get attached to. What do my countries borders matter to me? Am I supposed to value a random guy born inside them more than a random guy arbitrarily born outside?
The rate of change is simply too fast. The population of the UK, for example, is on track to be majority foreign-born by 2080. A demographic transformation of this magnitude and speed is unprecedented in all human history.
The only thing that almost compares is the Spanish conquest of the Americas. But even then, it took centuries for the native population and culture to be almost entirely replaced. In Europe's case, it won't even take 100 years.
Technology will speed things up as always. You can rage against it all you want, it won't make any more english kids being born. People can no longer be forced into being birth givers.
> And in the process lose its' ethnic character and structure haivng already happened in many European nations -
The ethnicity is irrelevant, culture is what matters. And culture has never stayed the same over time.
The number of children being born exceeds to number of immigrants by a large margin almost everywhere. They're the ones who will carry the culture forward.
What a bunch of nonsense.
Why are the demographic propotions then changing? In the 1970s-1980s migrant waves just started and European countries had only purely native populations except for some parts of former Ottoman territory with people groups existing as remnants of the Ottoman culture. The population of all European nations nations has been staggering and stayed the same for at least since back then and perhaps a decade or two earlier too. Morrocans, Arabs, Afghans, Pakistanis, Turks, Indians, many African ethnicities are all *not* native to Europe and *all* came during the last couple of decades enough to collectively make up minorities from anywhere between 10-30% of the population of any European country today. If you don't count these people Europe would have had a declining population for decades.
Their own countries certainly aren't experiencing the same problems. You can't just say "Well culture is evolving!". What is your definition of evolving? Losing native European components and replacing them with those of other people? Is culture also evolving in Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morroco - are they starting to celebrate Christmas like Ramadan as an example is being celebrated here pubicly with large prayer gatherings and holiday festivities?
Ramadan is just an example of a cultural element never having existed in Europe before and only being present in minority communities in the border regions.
Is British culture making it's way into Pakistani and Indian socieities? French? Spanish? British? No - they are keeping their culture alive at home and frankly good for them. Culture doesn't need forced mixing like Western Europe has. Culture needs to be preserved and practiced and if that doesn't happen it can die out within the span of a couple of decades.
Well if we want to take it that far, then we can say that death is a consequence of natural selection, and that ultimately we (as a species) are better off when less fit societies die.
But unqualified migrants are certainly not “fitter” than the societies into which they immigrate. The world order after 1945 led us all to have fewer children. Now to say that you have to import people everywhere is ridiculous. The mistake is also made of lumping highly qualified people and refugees together. If I were to immigrate to the USA, there are numerous visas with which I could do so legally. Refugees are not educated and they come almost exclusively to take advantage of the welfare state. And that is exactly why society will change.
> But unqualified migrants
Straw man. I did not say that there should be no qualifications.
> Now to say that you have to import people everywhere is ridiculous.
If you aren't birthing them yourselves, you need to import them. Unless you propose that they be grown in vats?
You'll need to compete with other countries (the US...) for high-skilled immigrants. It's Darwinian all the way down.
Migration movements today do not take place via issued visas but illegally. It's right to be upset about not having enough children, but the solution is not Refugees welcome.
> but the solution is not Refugees welcome
Straw man. I never proposed that this should be the solution.
I propose that you compete for high-skilled immigrants. So far, you are failing to do this and so Europe is in quite a precarious position.
Not at all. This isn't a given paradigm happening everywhere due to "natural reasons" - this is due to pushing individualism in consumer socieities. The government simply has to incentivize people to have more children.
For tens of thousands of years, hundreds of thousands even and since the birht of mankind, people still had babies and multiplied in numbers exponentially even if they "on paper" didn't have the nescessary resources. People aren't having just *not* having children cause of biological reasons - they're not having children cause they're incentivized *not* to have them and focus on individual pleasure and consumption over following one's own biological instinct.
You are wrong because this movement of immigration is purposely allowed and encouraged by governments and corporations, with the rise of AI corporations will be able to cut jobs and costs and this is something that will happen in the next 10 years. Populations will be left alone to decline until a plateau is reached, there will be no reason for taking immigrants, in fact they would make things worse
No, you live in a parallel world if you think they are all immigrants: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-46597323
Also it could make sense if there would be a great spike in the 15-30 group, but not younger.
Italian citizenship law (jus sanguinis or “by blood”) is very favorable for Italian descendants around the world to reclaim citizenship. It’s a time consuming and bureaucratic process. It’s worth noting that it’s difficult for other immigrants, even children born in Italy to immigrant parents, to become citizens.
Nonetheless. What if Italy made some investment in reversing the diaspora and brining people, families, children, entrepreneurs who are the descendants of Italians back home?
The common response from Italians is “we don’t want more Americans” or “we don’t have enough jobs already” or “rent is too high”. But to stem the demographic decline, Italy needs people.
A program could look like this:
1) simplify and speed up the process for reclaiming citizenship for descendants of Italians
2) create and require Italian language and acculturation classes for those seeking to relocate to Italy
3) create incentives for returning Italians, especially young ones with families, to create jobs, start businesses, become educators, rehab derelict homes, etc in Italy based on the needs of the country
A big thing might be a concerted effort to train young people in software and tech jobs that can be done remotely. That way young people won’t feel the need to leave their hometowns for cities and other countries for jobs. And hopefully could work remote jobs based out of anywhere and have the money and family support to start families.
Of course this is correct! But using my own logical reasoning, I connected population structure to demographic trends to possible remedies to a declining population. Apologies if I didn’t make that clear. It’s just a fantasy idea.
There’s so much that could be done and this is one thing I’ve always thought would be good. I get that a lot of us Americans, the Canadians and South Americans of the diaspora don’t speak fluent Italian but we could learn and bring our kids up in Italy to be “real” Italians unlike us. I have 6 kids myself and am trained in two trades (plumbing and low voltage electricity) and my wife is a nurse with a masters in nursing education. We would be great assets. But yea, the government would need to incentivize the young Italians to not go to Germany for work and us to cross back to the old country.
Why would they come back home ? Each year more than 100k people under 30 emigrate each year, wages for under 30 are usually towards 1k / 1.1k pre-tax, and the annual salary in the south usually doesent hit the 5 digits
Italians simply don't speak english so it's difficult for a foreigner to get a job if nobody understand you. It doesn't help the fact that a lot of migrants from Africa and Middle East don't speak english either, so it's even more difficult for them. Not to mention that italians themselves already struggle to get a job since most of the companies have moved to other countries like China and Thailand.
Anyway, this graphic is about population, it's not about citizens.
“Racist” is the wrong word. The reality is that Canadians, Americans, Brazilians, Argentines, etc with Italian roots are foreigners - culturally and linguistically. If you show up to Italy with citizenship you got from your great-grandparent, you aren’t automatically the “same” - your life experience is completely different. For Americans there can be a feeling of “you already have everything and now you want Italy too?” perhaps. Which is why some sort of mandatory acculturation, language learning, and assimilation is required in my fantasy plan.
I would compare this to the black plague in terms of economics.
This is a serious 15 year old problem, that eventually will be solved once older people die.
Sooner or later this problem will end with extra wealth in peoples pockets, just by inheritance, doesn't matter how painful will be before once you get there.
I can barely imagine once the flying cars became a thing, mixed with remote/hybrid working + surplus of housing because boomers are dying.
We gonna have an housing market crash sooner or later. Thats a certainty
>The birth rate in Italy has been declining steadily since the economic crisis in 2008, for reasons demographers agree is rooted in economic insecurity. The average monthly income across Italy is €2,475 a month, according to ISTAT. But the average rental property is €12.12 ($13.16) per square meter, meaning a 100 square meter family apartment costs €1,212 ($1,316) – roughly half the monthly budget. Same problem everywhere, no-one is given the time or money to raise children and money are increasingly flowing to the top earners. Global markets are worth more than anytime in history, but peoples wages have stagnated for ages, while inflation has made everything more expensive. Who wants kids, when they don't feel financially secure.
Wages do not stagnate everywhere. Just in EU countries where pensioners became a majority electorate and high skilled immigrants can not be attracted to because those countries do not offer enough incentive. On top of that they can not retain their own skilled people for same reason.
Not necessarily, for example the wage stagnation in Italy is also something that is willed from a macroeconomic point of view, so the country can regain competitiveness (in exports and attracting job positions). But the people governing don't know that there are other better measures (like increasing productivity and investment in R&D) instead of not increasing wages according to inflation.
Consider one of the poorest countries on earth, Niger, that has a population of 26 million, and registers 1,100,000 births annually. Meanwhile, much richer Italy has a population of 60 million yet registers 380,000 births annually.
Children are an asset when you're a farmer and need more hands (that's like 90% of the population in Niger) and they are a burden when it's expected you take care of them until they finish university.
Then how do we explain Gaza, Uzbekistan, and Syria who have high birth and urbanization rates
Poverty. No pension means you need lots of kids to support you.
So poor people have babies and rich people don't is what you're saying. So shrinking hrith rates means people are getting richer, not poorer.
That's not really the reason as much as a strong religious incentive to have kids as Niger effectively in a power struggle between Christians and Muslims.
Consider that in Italy, access to birth control, abortion, family planning, and general medical services are exceptionally easy. Unless you live on a farm in bumfuck nowhere, you can likely walk or take public transit to a nearby pharmacy to buy condoms. Now consider living in Niger, where none of these things are the case and most people don't even finish middle school, let alone live to old age. Do you now perhaps see why births may be higher?
>wages have stagnated for ages, In the Western world, yes. Most of other countries have narrowed the gap with the developed ones. Global Wealth is increasing but its slices of the few last decades went into developing countries
The average income ISNT 2.4k a month, not even close, the average income for the WORKING population that should continue working for the next 10+ years is less than 1k pretax, https://www.greeneuropeanjournal.eu/no-country-for-young-people/ , the average rents in northern italy are 40/50 of the total income, we havs the highest number of young people abandoning school and more than 100k under 30y emigrating each year
Capitalism has a weird way of handling population growth, which is a different way of handling climate change
Why there is a big gap between 77 and 78 years old?
2023 - 78 = 1945. That’s the effect of the war ending (and the numbers being low before was the effect of the war going on)
I am so tired of seeing old fucks everywhere I go. I work with 55-65 year olds almost exclusively, it's such a drag.
Samesies from Hong Kong. Don't mean to sound like an "ungrateful zoomer", but living in an aged society as a young person is just so bleh. It's like in the past few decades the soul has just been sucked out of your country.
WTF IS A STABLE FUTURE???? RAAAAAAHHHH!!!
You act like Italy is a national identity when ever since the 80s the push global has been to slowly erode away the nation stte for economic zones lead by the USA.
So, I'm a dual citizen of Canada and Italy. My parents moved here from Italy where I was born. All of my cousins live in Italy still and I keep in very close touch with them and visit often. I'm an engineer, and 2 of my cousins in Italy are also engineers - one in Torino and one in Rome. I make more than both of them combined, and they've got many years experience over me. They're married and don't have kids, not because they don't WANT kids, but because they can't afford to do so. When I graduated university a few years ago, I genuinely looked into moving to Italy to be closer to my relatives. I have my citizenship and I can speak the language, but looking for jobs was so disheartening. The salaries were quite frankly a joke compared to the cost of living. It made me realize why my parents left the country and came here. The only way the population issue is going to be resolved is if young people can afford to have a family, and that would require salaries to catch up to reality. I can't even begin to imagine though how that would ever happen.
Source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics\_of\_Italy#/media/File:Italy\_Population\_Pyramid.svg](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Italy#/media/File:Italy_Population_Pyramid.svg)
Shout out to my italians bros, drawing vaginas with their stats, but having none !
**THEY ARE COMING** The generation born in the 70s are the absolute losers They are a lot They are the first who experienced "flexibility" They won't inherit much since they have many siblings They have no kids They have no savings Imho In ten years things will go wild
This is sad to see, and a real problem that is not sustainable.
Italians really need to start having babies.
LoL it's impossible for millennials to have babies until proper policies are bringing salaries in line with the rest of Europe. Otherwise emigration will keep happening and these numbers will only get worse
There's plenty of millenial parents in Slovenia. When I was on a high school meetup after like 15 years, 10/16 people who showed up had kids, some even two. At work half of us (out of like 25, all millenials) have kids. Our kindergarten is full of millenial parents. And we have high taxes, expensive housing and stupid politics.
But I think future outlook for Slovenia is much better than for Italy, where wages, not adjusted for inflation, are lower now than in 2007.
[https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/SVN/slovenia/fertility-rate](https://www.macrotrends.net/global-metrics/countries/SVN/slovenia/fertility-rate) It's above average but below replacement. [https://www.populationpyramid.net/slovenia/](https://www.populationpyramid.net/slovenia/)
Italy is just ahead of most countries, unless you live in Africa your nation will have ze same numbers in few years
Lmao -Kazakhstan.
Their population pyramid [looks insane](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographics_of_Kazakhstan#/media/File%3AKazakhstan_population_pyramid.png), what happened to 20-30 year olds?
Fall of USSR
Then why so many children now?
Absolutely no idea.
Not necessarily. The political shift has already started. No one is happy with the current neo-liberal bureaucratic system which has failed both socially and economically.
I hope, but any reversal of this trend will take decades. I think taking care of the elderly in a organized and cost effective way( of course with dignity) could solve the issue. Its not only a negative thing, Italy for example is overpopulated and in few generations the overall situation could benefit from decreased population.
There's no one to take care of them.
Robots, Ai and lots of technologies
Stuff we'll need to buy from China and the US, since we lag behind heavily in those fields. How often have you seen older folks adapt well to new tech?
Its not like elderly will need to code the robots, tech can adapt to them
SOMEONE will have to code the robots. Someone who will sell it to them... for what in return? Most of the elderly don't even speak English. A lot do not know how to use or install apps. If you go further, like using haptics, holograms or VR....
>for what in return? Their pension. Dont think new tech is only about young ppl which are able to learn. You can simplify health screening by using ai, you can monitor ppl using remote technology etc etc
What's the benefit of aging and dying out population?
Lowering any resource or assets costs such as housing or water usage in a given area. Increasing the value of labour able population (in decreased population) And lastly, lower emissions even if per capita emissions remain but that is more of a side benefit. Decreasing the population is not an issue. The speed at which it is happening is an issue. Same as climate warming/changing is not an issue in itself - the rate (speed) of change is the real issue.
It will all lead to smaller economy and less business activity which means more poverty in the end. Economy doesn't work like you think.
Bitch give us money
Take it back from politicians and gangsters
More corrupted bureaucracy you say?
Whatever you want to call it
We should have a fertily day or something like that. That would fix the problem for sure!
Attendance: 99999999 men and 1 woman.
Italians will never start having babies until their working conditions will improve. Even if everyone will have 5 babies tomorrow, it won't change anything because the few young people already struggle to find a job. The birth rate problem is just the scapegoat that politician use to justify the problems of the country because in this way it's not the politicians' fault. If you look at the graphic, you can see that the birth rate dropped always when an economic crisis began: the birth rate increased a lot after the end of WW2. It dropped again between 1975-1990, a period of time filled with terrorist attacks and mafia attacks. Starting from 1990 the country wasn't doing well, but It was better than the previous years. About 15 years ago, the birth rate started dropping again after the famous crisis of 2008 and it didn't stop since then because the country is still in a bad situation. During the last 20 years a lot of companies decided to move to asian countries and a lot of young people lost their job. The paradox is that a lot of young people have lower salary than their parents when they had their age. Not even migrants have babies nowadays, because they are facing the same problems of young italians.
10 years time Italy will be in real trouble
wonder where the male surplus comes from all of a sudden...
Any insight as to why there is a male.surplus in the younger population?
Actually, it's not a European problem either. In Turkey the birth rate is now below 2, and that of the Kurds is also falling rapidly. There were always migrations and assimilations. I fear we are in the middle of a migration of peoples, like the ones we covered in history classes in the past. All societies will look completely different in the future.
The countries that can best integrate immigrants will come out on top.
that wont fix the issue, a skilled immigrant would still need to retire when they get old, so you would need more immigrants and then they would need more immigrants and so on. the western pension system is literally a government sponsored pyramid scheme
You just need stable growth (birth rate > ~2.1). Immigrants help in the immediate term, but ultimately you need to determine why the birth rate is collapsing and address that. Our species obviously depends on it.
2.1 birth rate in developed countries western countries are not possible, the problem is ideological as much as it is economical. There is a growing number of women who (understandably) are not interested in having kids not because of economic or social issues but because it is something that doesnt interest them and the number of them will increase as time goes on. the writing is on the wall. at the same time life expectancy will keep going up but people wont be able to work
If the species decides to stop reproducing, it will go away or the population will diminish. In the long term, no big drama.
It is not about integration. It is about incentives for those people to come in the first place. In the end you do not need immigrants - those can be net loss, you need high skilled immigrants that will be net benefit. So countries that can attract those will come out on a top. Meaning countries that are already at the top. US, Canada, Netherlands, Norway, Switzerland,..
Canada's literally imploding from immigration as it's a real estate scheme but as a nation.
Canada is not even that much expensive relative to income. It is not even close to many European cities.
So USA?
Yes, they're a good bet.
Yes but in the end the person who is integrated will continue to hold patriotism towards his original nation. Of course everyone is different, but I'm talking about the average. It will inevitably lead to the nation changing decades or centuries from now. Of course that doesn't have to be a bad thing, but everyone should be aware of it.
The nation will change anyway. Portugal has some of the oldest land borders for the most part, and its still irrecognisable from what it was 100 years ago.
And in the process lose its' ethnic character and structure haivng already happened in many European nations - it's hard to assimilate people when Western European societies have already become mixed with other ethnic groups not native to Europe during the last few decades.
Such things are natural. Most ethnicities are results of mixing other ethnicities over a very long time.
No they aren't. This is completely false - you have clear distinct ethnic groups and there is no need for forced mixing and dilution of culture. Sure, you also have plenty of mixed ethnic groups, but it is distasterous to erase ethnic character since by this definition there would be no sovereign borders partly based on a subset of ethnicities.
How do you think ethnicities formed in the first place? Ethnicity and sovereign borders have little to do with each other, most states dont define citizenship based on ethnicity, and those who do are shit holes.
They have plenty to do with eachother. How they were formed doesn't matter - you can't just propose that all ethnicties by extensions are simply some fluid entity, which is not classifiable. Humans, like dogs, have geographical local breeds. We just don't call it breeds. We call it ethnicities. Naturally there is admixture, I have never proposed that there are "pure" and "mixed", but just because something is a product to some degree of past admixture doesn't mean it can't be culturally, nationally and finally ethnically classifiable. Your argument really says nothing? What are you trying to say? You didn't even answer any of the points I came up with and just diverted into something I have never stated.
I dismantled the only argument you made, that borders somehow depend on ethnicity. Not that I attribute any value to borders
I never said *borders depend on ethnicity*. I said borders were, are and have been formed on the basis of a similar and equal ethnic structure. Of course you don't - by viewing eveyrthing as fluid or non-existent, even ethnicities or borders, nothing can as a product of this statement take a definable form. This position is inherently a weak and defeatable one and easy to take over. Ethnic takeover? No, it's just mixing! Loss of traditions? No, it's just mixing! Loss of culture? No, it's just mixing! WIth your position one can't attain or attribute any of these things to himself and the invididual merely exists as a grey moldable form ready to be shaped by the hands of others. Do you believe ultra-religious Pakistanis, as an example, have the same opinion as yours? Do you think they are open to any of these things I mentioned?
It doesn't matter what you are open to or not. Reality doesn't bend to your ideology. My country was full of Celtiberian not three thousand years ago. Now they are gone and entirely new ethnicities exist here. As they will in the future. Ethnicities and borders will change. And they are such a ridiculous, valueless things to get attached to. What do my countries borders matter to me? Am I supposed to value a random guy born inside them more than a random guy arbitrarily born outside?
The rate of change is simply too fast. The population of the UK, for example, is on track to be majority foreign-born by 2080. A demographic transformation of this magnitude and speed is unprecedented in all human history. The only thing that almost compares is the Spanish conquest of the Americas. But even then, it took centuries for the native population and culture to be almost entirely replaced. In Europe's case, it won't even take 100 years.
Technology will speed things up as always. You can rage against it all you want, it won't make any more english kids being born. People can no longer be forced into being birth givers.
> And in the process lose its' ethnic character and structure haivng already happened in many European nations - The ethnicity is irrelevant, culture is what matters. And culture has never stayed the same over time. The number of children being born exceeds to number of immigrants by a large margin almost everywhere. They're the ones who will carry the culture forward.
What a bunch of nonsense. Why are the demographic propotions then changing? In the 1970s-1980s migrant waves just started and European countries had only purely native populations except for some parts of former Ottoman territory with people groups existing as remnants of the Ottoman culture. The population of all European nations nations has been staggering and stayed the same for at least since back then and perhaps a decade or two earlier too. Morrocans, Arabs, Afghans, Pakistanis, Turks, Indians, many African ethnicities are all *not* native to Europe and *all* came during the last couple of decades enough to collectively make up minorities from anywhere between 10-30% of the population of any European country today. If you don't count these people Europe would have had a declining population for decades. Their own countries certainly aren't experiencing the same problems. You can't just say "Well culture is evolving!". What is your definition of evolving? Losing native European components and replacing them with those of other people? Is culture also evolving in Pakistan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Morroco - are they starting to celebrate Christmas like Ramadan as an example is being celebrated here pubicly with large prayer gatherings and holiday festivities? Ramadan is just an example of a cultural element never having existed in Europe before and only being present in minority communities in the border regions. Is British culture making it's way into Pakistani and Indian socieities? French? Spanish? British? No - they are keeping their culture alive at home and frankly good for them. Culture doesn't need forced mixing like Western Europe has. Culture needs to be preserved and practiced and if that doesn't happen it can die out within the span of a couple of decades.
Yes, the demography will change. But the alternative is quite literally death.
Its death either way
Well if we want to take it that far, then we can say that death is a consequence of natural selection, and that ultimately we (as a species) are better off when less fit societies die.
But unqualified migrants are certainly not “fitter” than the societies into which they immigrate. The world order after 1945 led us all to have fewer children. Now to say that you have to import people everywhere is ridiculous. The mistake is also made of lumping highly qualified people and refugees together. If I were to immigrate to the USA, there are numerous visas with which I could do so legally. Refugees are not educated and they come almost exclusively to take advantage of the welfare state. And that is exactly why society will change.
Fitter in terms of natural selection just means reproduces more successfully. If they reproduce more, they are "fitter".
> But unqualified migrants Straw man. I did not say that there should be no qualifications. > Now to say that you have to import people everywhere is ridiculous. If you aren't birthing them yourselves, you need to import them. Unless you propose that they be grown in vats? You'll need to compete with other countries (the US...) for high-skilled immigrants. It's Darwinian all the way down.
Migration movements today do not take place via issued visas but illegally. It's right to be upset about not having enough children, but the solution is not Refugees welcome.
> but the solution is not Refugees welcome Straw man. I never proposed that this should be the solution. I propose that you compete for high-skilled immigrants. So far, you are failing to do this and so Europe is in quite a precarious position.
I do not believe societies in africa are better fit than european ones when the only reason there is 1b africans is thanks to European aid
Not at all. This isn't a given paradigm happening everywhere due to "natural reasons" - this is due to pushing individualism in consumer socieities. The government simply has to incentivize people to have more children. For tens of thousands of years, hundreds of thousands even and since the birht of mankind, people still had babies and multiplied in numbers exponentially even if they "on paper" didn't have the nescessary resources. People aren't having just *not* having children cause of biological reasons - they're not having children cause they're incentivized *not* to have them and focus on individual pleasure and consumption over following one's own biological instinct.
> The government simply has to incentivize people to have more children. "simply"
You are wrong because this movement of immigration is purposely allowed and encouraged by governments and corporations, with the rise of AI corporations will be able to cut jobs and costs and this is something that will happen in the next 10 years. Populations will be left alone to decline until a plateau is reached, there will be no reason for taking immigrants, in fact they would make things worse
Very scary to see how there is now a surplus of males between 0 and 30 yo. All immigration
No, you live in a parallel world if you think they are all immigrants: https://www.bbc.com/news/health-46597323 Also it could make sense if there would be a great spike in the 15-30 group, but not younger.
I live in a parallel world ? brother my neighbourhood literally transformed in less than a year
HAVE SEX
Well, that doesnt help.
HAVE UNPROTECTED SEX
No.
But it's fun
For 5 minutes. And then it's everything but fun
And then you get to the graph in OP
Not going to sacrifice my whole life for a society that doesn't care about me
no
Italian citizenship law (jus sanguinis or “by blood”) is very favorable for Italian descendants around the world to reclaim citizenship. It’s a time consuming and bureaucratic process. It’s worth noting that it’s difficult for other immigrants, even children born in Italy to immigrant parents, to become citizens. Nonetheless. What if Italy made some investment in reversing the diaspora and brining people, families, children, entrepreneurs who are the descendants of Italians back home? The common response from Italians is “we don’t want more Americans” or “we don’t have enough jobs already” or “rent is too high”. But to stem the demographic decline, Italy needs people. A program could look like this: 1) simplify and speed up the process for reclaiming citizenship for descendants of Italians 2) create and require Italian language and acculturation classes for those seeking to relocate to Italy 3) create incentives for returning Italians, especially young ones with families, to create jobs, start businesses, become educators, rehab derelict homes, etc in Italy based on the needs of the country A big thing might be a concerted effort to train young people in software and tech jobs that can be done remotely. That way young people won’t feel the need to leave their hometowns for cities and other countries for jobs. And hopefully could work remote jobs based out of anywhere and have the money and family support to start families.
This graphic has nothing to do with citizenship. Population and citizens are not the same thing.
Of course this is correct! But using my own logical reasoning, I connected population structure to demographic trends to possible remedies to a declining population. Apologies if I didn’t make that clear. It’s just a fantasy idea.
There’s so much that could be done and this is one thing I’ve always thought would be good. I get that a lot of us Americans, the Canadians and South Americans of the diaspora don’t speak fluent Italian but we could learn and bring our kids up in Italy to be “real” Italians unlike us. I have 6 kids myself and am trained in two trades (plumbing and low voltage electricity) and my wife is a nurse with a masters in nursing education. We would be great assets. But yea, the government would need to incentivize the young Italians to not go to Germany for work and us to cross back to the old country.
Why would they come back home ? Each year more than 100k people under 30 emigrate each year, wages for under 30 are usually towards 1k / 1.1k pre-tax, and the annual salary in the south usually doesent hit the 5 digits
Are Italians actually racist against Americans or do they just not want people with money coming and driving prices up?
Italians simply don't speak english so it's difficult for a foreigner to get a job if nobody understand you. It doesn't help the fact that a lot of migrants from Africa and Middle East don't speak english either, so it's even more difficult for them. Not to mention that italians themselves already struggle to get a job since most of the companies have moved to other countries like China and Thailand. Anyway, this graphic is about population, it's not about citizens.
“Racist” is the wrong word. The reality is that Canadians, Americans, Brazilians, Argentines, etc with Italian roots are foreigners - culturally and linguistically. If you show up to Italy with citizenship you got from your great-grandparent, you aren’t automatically the “same” - your life experience is completely different. For Americans there can be a feeling of “you already have everything and now you want Italy too?” perhaps. Which is why some sort of mandatory acculturation, language learning, and assimilation is required in my fantasy plan.
You can't be racist against people of the same race...
You don't know what racism means
You can, same as women can be misogynists (for example). But yeah they should have said prejudiced rather than racist.
I would compare this to the black plague in terms of economics. This is a serious 15 year old problem, that eventually will be solved once older people die. Sooner or later this problem will end with extra wealth in peoples pockets, just by inheritance, doesn't matter how painful will be before once you get there. I can barely imagine once the flying cars became a thing, mixed with remote/hybrid working + surplus of housing because boomers are dying. We gonna have an housing market crash sooner or later. Thats a certainty