(ANSA) - ROME, NOVEMBER 24 - The current health and economic crisis linked to the pandemic could negatively affect not only the number of deaths, but also the birth rate.
"It is, in fact, legitimate to hypothesize that the climate of fear and uncertainty and the growing difficulties of a material nature (linked to employment and income) generated by recent events will negatively influence the fertility choices of Italian couples".
This was underlined by the president of Istat, Gian Carlo Blangiardo, during a hearing on the maneuver before the Chamber and Senate budget commissions.
"The 420 thousand births registered in Italy in 2019, which already represent a minimum never reached in over 150 years of national unity, could fall, according to an Istat scenario updated on the basis of the most recent trends, to about 408 thousand in the final balance of the current year - acknowledging in December there was a likely decline in conception in March - and then further reduced to 393,000 in 2021 ", he added.
The crisis affected the South and young people more, "but this time it was mainly women - mostly employed in services (the sector most affected with 809 thousand fewer employees than in the second quarter of 2019) and in precarious jobs - who suffered the most: in the second quarter of 2020 there are 470 thousand less employed than in the same quarter of the previous year (323 thousand fewer among those with fixed-term contracts) and the employment rate for women aged 15-64 stood at 48.4%, against 66, 6% of men, placing us in the penultimate place of the European ranking, just above Greece ", continued the president of Istat.
The data on female employment in Italy "remain worrying despite the fact that the level of education for women is significantly higher than that of boys", he concluded.
(HANDLE).
