Regionale Merkmale und natürliche Bevölkerungsdynamik in Italien

Abstract

Italy is at a significant turning-point in its population develop ment at present. The 1981 Census has revealed these changes with great clarity. Not only the north of the country, but also the entire south has entered upon a new phase in its population dynamics. The number of births is very rapidly declining everywhere in the country. So too, the reduction in family sizes continues steadily. The formerly marked migration flow to the industrial centres of the north and to other European countries is rapidly declining. The economic difficulties and shrinkage of the labour markets has led to a marked re-migration to the former areas of emigration. As migration can no longer play the role of the traditional safety valve of the overpopulated south, a general reduction in the size of families is establishing itself as the determining principle of the population process. It would be wrong to attribute these striking changes solely to the revolutions in economic structures and to the uncertainties over incomes. Cultural, social and political causes are equally much involved in the dissolution of traditional family structures. In the north as well as in the central region of Italy, extensive areas already present a negative population balance. In the north only Lombardy and Venezia continue to show a positive natural population balance. Added to this is the small Bolzano Province, the positive balance of which is due to its ethnic dualism and the traditionally high surplus of births among the German-speaking rural population. Even in the south the accelerated decline in births in Italy since the middle of the seventies has established itself in its full intensity. In some parts here the reduction in family size proceeds even faster than in the north. The substantial decline in the south results in the first-ever opportunity to break the vicious circle of poverty and high fertility.