Luiss Open: Italy faces a record low birth rate and rapid population aging
“It happened in Italy for the first time. It was the year 1995." These are the opening words of the recent essay titled “The Historic Demographic Transition,” by Joseph Chamie, one of today's most distinguished demographers and former director of the United Nations Population Division.
The "historic reversal" that Chamie traces back to its origins in our country is the "demographic turning point at which the number of young people in a given population falls below that of the elderly." This turning point in the history of human society first occurred in Italy in the mid-1990s. Five years later, it reached six more countries—Bulgaria, Germany, Greece, Japan, Portugal, and Spain—then twenty-three more by 2015.
To grasp the radical nature of this ongoing change, consider that just 50 years ago, the world's population was 3.3 billion, with over 7 children under 15 for every person over 65.
Today, with 7.5 billion people living on the planet, that ratio has halved: there are 3 young people for every elderly person. In Italy, this same ratio first reversed and then widened, to the point that today there are 0.6 children for every elderly person (in other words, for every 3 children, there are 5 elderly people).