Un futuro molto cupo

[Nanths]

Originally posted by larth
la solita mancanza di argomenti ? ...

Ma non eri tu il keynesiano? Allora applicati...

(o devo dedurre che neanche su john maynarduccio tuo sei molto "preparato"...?)

[Dragonball (POL)]

Originally posted by Gringo
Oggi in Italia la media è di 1,4 figli per donna (1,2 al nord e 1,6 al sud). In Svezia, dove negli ultimi 15 anni si è verificato un autentico babyboom che ha fatto aumentare la popolazione autctona di quasi 300.000 unità su una popolazione di meno di 9.000.000 di abitanti (non tengo assolutamente conto degli immigrati extraeuropei, ma solo dei cittadini svedesi), oggi le donne di Svezia fanno in media ben 2,1 figli per donna, ma il 42% di questi bambini nascono da ragazze madri o al di fuori del matrimonio....insomma, ottima natalità ma addio famiglia....anche questo è un bel problema: aumentare la natalità salvaguardando la famiglia....

No.
In Svezia nonostante poderosi incentivi per le nascite il tasso di fertilità è in calo all'1,5 figli/donna.
La media italica è dell'1,2-1,25 che al nord scende all'0,9-1.

Ragionando sul caso svedese,è evidente che gli incentivi economici servono a poco.
Un altro esempio clamoroso è la Norvegia,Paese ricchissimo (ha il petrolio),molto + ricco della Svezia,e molto + generoso come welfare,con un indice + alto (1,7),ma ben distante dal famoso 2,1 e comunque in calo.
E' evidente che il motivo della scarsa natalità è + culturale che economico.

P.S.
Le statistiche sui figli nati fuori dal matrimonio nei Paesi Scandinavi sono da prendere con le pinze visto che al 95% dei casi,una coppia dopo aver fatto un figlio fuori dal matrimionio si sposa o comunque convive stabilmente.

[LosVonRom (POL)]

Gli incentivi economici tendono spesso a favorire gli scimmioni.
In italia poi figuriamoci.

[Dragonball (POL)]

http://www.nytimes.com/2002/12/26/in...rtner=MOREOVER

December 26,2002
Persistent Drop in Fertility Reshapes Europe's Future
By FRANK BRUNI


FERRARA, Italy — On a recent night at the Blue Elephant recreation center here, a clutch of parents watched adoringly as dozens of 3- and 4-year-olds sprinted through a colorful playroom, bounced on the cushioned floor or doodled on drawing pads, aglow with creative pride.

It was Italy as outsiders still imagine it: child-worshiping and family-loving.

But there was something wrong with the picture. Most of the parents were gazing at one, and only one, child.

That was true of Gianluca Valenti, who said that giving his son any siblings would be too exhausting and expensive, and of Barbara Lenzi, who said that more than one child "doesn't seem to make sense."

It was also true of Rosa Andolfi, who responded to a question about having an additional child as if a vampire were near.

"Basta!" Ms. Andolfi more or less yelped, then made a cross with her index fingers and thrust it forward.

That gesture was not just funny but telling; it touched on an increasingly worrisome reality for Italy and other European countries whose fertility rates have plummeted over the last decades, shifting one-child families close to the statistical norm.

In Spain and Sweden, Germany and Greece, the total fertility rate — or the average number of children that a woman, based on current indicators, is expected to give birth to — was 1.4 or lower last year, according to the World Health Organization.

In no West European country did the rate reach 2.1 — the marker that, demographers say, means an exact replenishment of the population. By contrast, the United States had a 2.0 rate, which demographers attribute to greater immigration.

While that trend has been evident for many years, its slow-building consequences are now coming into starker relief, as more West European countries acknowledge and take new steps to address the specter of sharply winnowed and less competitive work forces, surfeits of retirees and pension systems that will need to be cut back deeply.

In Italy, where the fertility rate last year was 1.2, according to the health organization, Labor Minister Roberto Maroni has announced that the cost of the state pension system will need to be reduced. Mr. Maroni said the government would offer incentives, which he did not specify, to keep people at work past the minimum retirement age of 57.

The United Nations recently published data suggesting that the population of Spain could decline to about 31.3 million in 2050 from about 39.9 million now. According to the World Health Organization, Spain's fertility rate last year was 1.1, the lowest in Western Europe.

Many provinces in Italy's wealthy, well-educated north have rates well below that.

The rate in the province of Ferrara, which includes the city of Ferrara, has been under 0.9 for each of the years since 1986 that Italy's National Institute of Statistics kept track.

Ferrara officials talk about the dearth of young children in the streets, the closing of elementary schools over the last decade and a pervasive sense that something is missing.

"There's a lack of energy," Deputy Mayor Tiziano Tagliani said in a recent interview here. "The society is colder without children."

Nationwide, Italy's fertility rate has been so low for so long — under 1.5 since 1984 — that the country offers an especially good glimpse into the dimensions and dynamics of the trend.

For example, Italy now has the world's oldest population. The percentage of people 60 or older is 25, compared with 16 percent in the United States, according to the population division of the United Nations.

The division's experts project that by 2050, if current trends hold, 42 percent of Italy's population will be 60 or older.

Antonio Golini, a professor of demographics at the University of Rome, Sapienza, said that would be "unsustainable, from a cultural and even psychological point of view."

That sense of alarm was reflected in Pope John Paul II's first-ever address to the Italian Parliament in November. The pope said "the crisis of the birthrate" in Italy was a "grave threat that bears upon the future of this country."

In Italy, as in other West European countries, the low fertility rate is interwoven with an array of other issues — immigration, for one. While many people and many politicians in Europe would like to clamp down on the rising tide of new arrivals over the last decade, they may be forced to accept it, simply to fill jobs and maintain levels of productivity.

Europe stands out as the continent with the lowest fertility rates. The numbers are now starkest in East European countries like Bulgaria, Latvia and Ukraine, each of which had a rate of 1.1 in 2001, according to the World Health Organization. (Its figures sometimes differ slightly from those of individual countries, but provide a yardstick.)

But the trend hit Western Europe earlier, and has had more time to produce hand-wringing and soul-searching. Apart from welcoming more immigrants, no one knows precisely what to do.

Many governments have expanded tax breaks for parents, child care alternatives or maternity and paternity benefits, acknowledging that a high cost of living and more women in the work force can be obstacles to large families. In some of those countries, like France, the fertility rate has nudged slightly upward.

Spain is considering a variety of ways to address those obstacles: cheaper utility bills for large families; assistance for young couples who are trying to afford homes; the creation of hundreds of thousands of new preschools and nursery schools; and longer hours for existing schools, an accommodation for working parents.

Although the Italian government provides mothers with nearly full salary compensation for about a half-year of maternity leave, the city of Ferrara, like several other north Italian cities, added benefits that kick in after that period. They include cash supplements of about $350 a month for mothers who want to stay at home an additional nine months. Ferrara also has pumped millions of dollars into nursery schools and child care centers like the Blue Elephant.

But Italy's low fertility rate persists, suggesting that the reasons go well beyond the arithmetic of salaries and schedules.

"People are studying longer, and thus are finding work later, when there is work, and then are marrying later, which doesn't necessarily mean having a baby anymore," said Valerio Terra Abrami, head of the department of social statistics for Italy's National Institute of Statistics.

Contraception and abortion are more readily available. Divorce is more common.

Moreover, decades of prosperity have altered people's assumptions and expectations. Older people once poised to look after grandchildren now pursue other activities and travel more. As for would-be parents, their attachments to leisure time, conveniences and indulgences do not easily accommodate multiple children — or sometimes, for that matter, any children at all.

"It's never been at the top of my list," said Teresa Ginori, 41, a fashion magazine consultant who lives outside Milan. "It's never been in the top 200 things."

Ms. Ginori and many women she knows have never married, in part, she said, because of a facet of Italian life that she cited as one possible explanation for the especially low fertility rate here.

Many Italian men, she said, live with their mothers into their 30's. When they marry, they are not prepared to help out at home in ways that take pressure off women, especially if those women want to have children.

"Even the most open-minded guy — if you scratch with the nail a little bit, there's the mother who did everything for him," she said. "I hate the mothers of these men. These mothers are a disaster."

Parents also seem to feel that they owe more opportunities to the children they do have, a conviction that discourages large families.

That partly explained the prevalence of only children in Ferrara, where one-child parents at the Blue Elephant center mentioned siblings who had also stopped at one child. The center's coordinator, Monica Viaro, 37, has only one child, an 8-year-old son.

Ms. Andolfi, 32, who has a 3-year-old son, said a second child would limit her son and limit the baby.

She conceded that her family's definition of what it needed was expansive.

"The cellphones aren't enough and the televisions aren't enough," she said. "It's a little selfish."

Ms. Lenzi, 32, who is also part of a two-career couple, said she liked to read to her 3-year-old son, adding, "It doesn't make sense to have three just to tuck them in at night and say, `Ciao, stella,' and that's it."





E' chiaro che nessuno ha la bacchetta magica per risolvere il problema,ma il problema c'è e prima o poi va affrontato.
Il dibattito è utile.

[LosVonRom (POL)]

Diffondere la cultura della famiglia che è una gran cosa.
LA cosa più importante di una comunità di individui.

Facilitare la vita alle madri lavoratrici con strutture adeguate.

Gli incentivi economici devono essere usati per potenziare le strutture e renderle fruibili.

[Dragonball (POL)]

Decline in birthrates threatens to shape lopsided societies
By MICHAEL SPECTER - The New York Times

STOCKHOLM, Sweden -- Mia Hulton is a woman of the late 20th century. Soft-spoken, well-educated and thoughtful, she sings Renaissance music in a choral group, lives with a man and works seven days a week.
At 33, she is in full pursuit of an academic career. And despite the fact that she lives in Sweden -- which provides more support for women who want families than any other country -- Hulton doesn't see how she can possibly make room in her life for babies. Someday maybe, but not soon.
"There are times when I think perhaps I will be missing something important if I don't have a child," she said. "But today, women finally have so many chances to have the life they want. To travel and work and learn. It's exciting and demanding. I just find it hard to see where the children would fit in."
Hulton would never consider herself a radical, but she has joined one of the fundamental social revolutions of the century.
Driven largely by prosperity and freedom, millions of women throughout the developed world are having fewer children than ever before. They stay in school longer, put more emphasis on work and marry later. As a result, birthrates in many countries are now in a rapid, sustained decline.
Never before -- except in times of plague, war and deep economic depression -- have birthrates fallen so low for so long.
What was once regarded universally as a cherished goal -- incredibly low birthrates -- has in the industrial world suddenly become a cause for alarm. With life expectancy rising at the same time that fertility drops, most developed countries soon may find themselves with lopsided societies that will be nearly impossible to sustain: a large number of elderly people and not enough young people working to support them.
There is no longer a single country in Europe where people are having enough children to replace themselves when they die. Italy recently became the first nation in history in which there are more people older than 60 than there are younger than 20.(L'Italia recentemente e' diventata la prima nazione nella STORIA in cui la popolazione con + di 60 anni e' maggiore di quella sotto i 20) This year Germany, Greece and Spain probably will cross the same eerie divide.
"Europe is old and rigid," said Jean-Claude Chesnais, director of research at France's National Institute for the Study of Demography. "So it is fading. You can see that as the natural cycle of civilization, perhaps something inevitable. And in many ways, low population growth is wonderful. Certainly to control fertility in China, Bangladesh, much of Africa -- that is an absolute triumph.
"Yet we must look beyond simple numbers. And here I think Europe may be in the vanguard of a very profound trend. Because you cannot have a successful world without children in it."

Experts confounded

The effects of the shift will resonate far beyond Europe. Last year Japan's fertility rate -- the number of children born to the average woman in a lifetime -- fell to 1.39, the lowest level it has ever reached. In the United States, where a large pool of new immigrants helps keep the birthrate higher than in any other prosperous country, the figure is still slightly below an average of 2.1 children per woman -- the number needed to keep the population from starting to shrink.
Even in the developing world, where overcrowding remains a major cause of desperation and disease, the pace of growth has slowed almost everywhere. Since 1965, according to U.N. population data, the birthrate in the Third World has been cut in half -- from six children per woman to three. In the last decade alone, for example, the figure in Bangladesh has fallen from 6.2 children per woman to 3.4. That's a bigger drop than in the previous two centuries.
Little more than 25 years have passed since a famous set of computer studies sponsored by the Club of Rome, a global think tank, showed that population pressures would devastate the world by the mid-1990s.
Nothing of the kind has come to pass. The authors of that dire forecast could not have foreseen 30 years ago that women in countries such as Italy by now would be producing an average of fewer than 1.2 children, the lowest figure ever recorded among humans.(L'Italia ha un tasso di nascite con MENO di 1,2 figli per famiglia,una tasso MAI registrato tra gli umani.) Or that the Berlin Wall would disappear, creating economic uncertainties that have frozen the birthrate from the Black Forest to Vladivostok.
In a world in which women work more than ever before and contraception remains readily available, it is hard to find somebody who thinks that someday soon large families will make a comeback.
"I'm thinking of having children in the future, perhaps two," said Roberta Lenzi, 27, who is single and studies political science in Bologna, Italy, the city with the lowest birthrate in the world.(Bologna e' la citta col tasso di natalita' + BASSO DEL MONDO)
"I'm an only child and, if I could, I'd have more than one child. But most couples I know wait until their 30s to have children. People want to have their own life; they want to have a successful career. When you see life in these terms, children are an impediment. At most you'll have one; more are rare."
There has long been an assumption that low birthrates were better than high ones. Fewer people put less strain on the resources of the planet. And as a country becomes richer, its people always have fewer children. If more people are needed, immigration can be a solution -- and in many places, specialists now think it's the only one left. But Europe, unlike the United States, has been resistant to immigration.
"What is happening now has simply never happened before in the history of the world," said Nicholas Eberstadt, a demographer based at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington. "This is terra incognita. If these trends continue, in a generation or two there may be countries where most people's only blood relatives will be their parents."
Incentives no longer work
Perhaps no country has tried harder to change its future than Sweden.
Decades ago, with its birthrate dwindling, Sweden decided to support family life with a public generosity found nowhere else. Couples who both work and have small children enjoy cash payments, tax incentives and job leaves combined with incredible flexibility to work part time for as many as eight years after a child's birth.
Sweden spends 10 times as much as Italy or Spain on programs intended to support families.(La Svezia spende 10 volte + di Spagna e Italia per supportare le famiglie) It spends nearly three times as much per person on such programs as the United States. So there should be no surprise that Sweden had the highest birthrate in Europe by 1991.
"We were a model for the world," said Marten Lagergren, undersecretary in the Ministry of Social Health and Welfare, and the man responsible for figuring out what is happening with Sweden's birthrate. "They all came to examine us. People thought we had some secret. Unfortunately, it seems that we do not."
Sometime after 1990, the bottom dropped out of Sweden's baby boom. Between then and 1995, the birthrate fell sharply, from 2.12 to 1.6. Most people blamed the economy, which had turned sour and forced politicians to trim -- ever so slightly -- the country's benefit program. It is normal for people to put off having children when the future looks doubtful, so the change made sense.
But then the economy got better, and the birthrate fell faster and further than ever. By March of this year the figure for Sweden was almost the same as that in Japan -- 1.42. And though it's too soon to say, officials think it may be falling still.
"Nobody on Earth can tell you what is going on here," said Mac Murray, a philosopher trained in statistics who is in charge of planning for the nation's school system. "I believe we are seeing a fundamental shift in human behavior."
All content © 1998 The Kansas City Star

[Dragonball (POL)]

Originally posted by Gringo
Purtroppo mancano dati statistici sui matrimoni misti e sulla reale razza dei nascituri. Di quei 1,6 figli/donna nati in svezia quanti sono realmente svedesi e quanti sono invece "svedesi di nome ma cioccolata di fatto"? Stesso problema vale per Germania, Francia...chi mi sa dire quale sia ad esempio la fertilità delle donne realmente franche paragonata invece a quella delle "francesi" che di nome fanno Aliya?

Guarda che non è 1,6,ma 1,4 attualmente.
Sul fatto delle coppie miste,un mio amico che lavora da 3 anni in Norvegia,m'ha confermato quel che sospettavo e cioè che è vero che le scandinave,diciamo,"non disdegnano" gli arabi,iraniani (e itaglioni? ) per una serata di sesso,ma va anche detto,che sposarsi e avere figli con un non autoctono è visto molto male da quelle parti.
Come dice il mio amico Hassan va bene per fare del sesso momentaneo,ma quando le cose diventano serie tornano dal loro Karlson.

P.S.
Sulle francesi non so.

[EL TONDA]

i figli sono una benedizione...
i vostri discorsi sono si veri ma in parte,mi spiego,di solito chi ha tanta brama di figliazioni o di prolificità è chi alla leggera non sa a cosa va incontro.
io che di anni ne ho 22 ho già 2 figli e un terzo in arrivo,in entrambi i casi le unioni si sono concluse anche in modo drammatico e triste,spero che al terzo vada meglio, il fatto è che è il concetto stesso di famiglia che non esiste più,quindi se una rimane incinta in giovane età lo prende come una disgrazia e un fardello ingombrante,se pensa questo di suo figlio come potrà mai essere una buona donna di casa e una buona moglie?

io lascio alle donne le loro libertà,ma ricordate che è sempre l'uomo che ha il manico e stà a lui metterlo dove più conviene...


a quelli che si fanno seghe mentali con la crisi demografica dico,andate in giro,ci sono donne per tutti e provate - se vi riesce- a dare il vostro contributo...

[Mitteleuropeo]

El Tonda non ha torto: piu' che alla quantita' dobbiamo guardare alla qualita'. A che ci servono figli in famiglie gay, divorziate, violente, affamate? Se siamo in queste condizioni, che purtroppo il turbocapitalismo di ispirazione USA fa aumentare, dobbiamo per prima cosa pensare al futuro dei figli, che non hanno chiesto di essere messi al mondo.

Con che faccia diremo loro un giorno: "ti ho procreato affinche' paghi la mia pensione e preservi la nostra razza"?

Quello che dobbiamo fare, e' creare un ambiente che permetta ai figli degli Europei di vivere dignitosamente del loro lavoro e dare loro un' educazione che permetta loro di inserirsi in questo mondo del lavoro (che NOI abbiamo creato).

Saluti

[larth (POL)]

Originally posted by Nanths
Ma non eri tu il keynesiano? Allora applicati...

(o devo dedurre che neanche su john maynarduccio tuo sei molto "preparato"...?)

io invece deduco che , con classica tecnica comunista , a corto di argomenti sul thred in oggetto, cerchi di spostare la discussione altrove con metodi provocatorii...