Development under threat amidst a demographic winter and dropping graduate numbers: who will plan our future?
Despite its creative nature and an aptitude for amazing recoveries, Italy risks running out of a resource that’s essential to development: people, and young people, above all. We are indeed heading towards a “demographic winter”, with declining birth rates and an increasingly older population – a veritable “unhappy degrowth”. And this is happening while the country is already in the thrall of a deep crisis affecting education, a crisis that’s gradually worsening as competitiveness and the quality of its economic and social growth are suffering from the ascendancy of the “knowledge economy”, as the challenges entailed by the so-called “digital economy” and the widespread presence of Artificial Intelligence demand people equipped with a substantial critical cultural background. Meanwhile, sinking graduate numbers have placed Italy at the bottom of EU ranks, and the number will keep on falling over the next years. Is a decline really unavoidable, then? Will we no longer be able to write a “future-oriented story”?
To get a clearer idea, let’s have a look at some figures, taken from recent data released by ISTAT (Il Sole24Ore and La Stampa, 8 April). In 2022, for the first time since the unification of Italy, the number of births fell to fewer than 400,000 children (393,000 to be precise), with 713,000 deaths. Basically, seven babies and thirteen deaths – almost double the number of births – for every 1,000 inhabitants.
Over the past five years, Italy lost a million people, its population dropping below 59 million (with the South ravaged by rising emigration: 629,000 inhabitant less than in 2018). Moreover, the country has grown old: the average age is of 46 years and there are more than 14 million people aged over 65 years, that is, 24% of the population (after Japan, we’re now the oldest country in the world).
“Italy is fading away”, drearily tweeted Elon Musk, while Giuseppe De Rita, president of CENSIS (the Italian research institute on social change) provided a broodier and more comprehensive account: “We are a country without any notions of a future, without motivations, without goals. The younger generations no longer have children, and they no longer get married, too. They do not even set a low bar for themselves for forming a family.” (Corriere della Sera, 8 April). Most of them suffer from precarious employment conditions, high living costs in the larger cities, scarce availability of family services (schools, nursery schools, etc.) and negligence concerning women’s employment – just a few of the reasons for this widespread lack of confidence.
Chiara Saraceno, sociologist preoccupied with social inequality themes, summarises issues and prospects as follows: “Supporting people who choose to have children implies a commitment to integrated and ongoing policies that allow young people to be able to think about the future with a reasonable amount of confidence and that create contexts able to nurture both the children born and raised within them and their parents”.
International comparisons show that “in Europe, the highest fertility rates (though mostly below the reproduction levels) and lower differences in age groups are found in those countries offering more opportunities to young people and better equipped with services able to care for newborns, as well as more congenial to working mothers. Financial assistance is important, if continuous and substantial, yet less so than early childhood services, support for gender equality, conciliation policies”.
Essentially, our issues encompass a demographic decline, a weak social fabric and a lack of reforms, as well as scarce quality and training of human resources, which affect productivity and economic competitiveness in industries and services. “In 20 years’ time there will only be 80,000 graduates”, worryingly estimates Francesco Profumo, president of philanthropic foundation Compagnia di San Paolo and former minister of Education, Universities and Research (during the Monti government), as well as former president of the Italian National Research Council.
It’s easy maths: this year, about 500,000 students, predominantly born in 2004, will take their high-school examinations – in 2004, however, the number of high-school students amounted to 800,000, which means that, in almost 20 years, the high-school student population has almost halved. Now, out of these current 500,000 students, 60% will go to university – 300,000, then – and only 60% of them will graduate in four or five years: 180,000 graduates. If this trend continues, out of the 390,000 children born this year, 240,000 will take their high-school exams in 2041. 140,000 will attend university, and 80,000 will graduate. Too few for sure.
What can we do? We can push for new demographic policies, knowing however that due to their long-range nature we’ll only see the results in 20 years’ time, and in the meantime, explains Profumo, “We must learn to manage immigration”. In other words, we need a long-term plan to attract young people to Italy, young people with a drive for development and the desire for a future, and we must train them and provide them with opportunities.
Profumo adds, “Demographic issues, just like immigration and education issues, are central to our future. Yet, political parties want immediate results. And this is certainly of no help to Italy”.
We are “a country unaware of the dynamics that govern the world”, asserts Luca De Biase (Il Sole24Ore, 8 April), that is, a country that doesn’t care about innovation, oblivious to the challenges posed by our modern times currently undergoing an intense and fierce “metamorphosis” engendered by the environmental and digital twin transition.
Nowadays, the creativity and innovative entrepreneurship generated by the economic boom, the dynamism that marked the 1980s, the commitment to Europe and the euro, and the momentum gained after the COVID-19 pandemic, are all in danger to be thwarted by this fall in confidence and by the educational and cultural deficiencies affecting the new generations.
As such, we need an education system moulded by the values and the criteria of a “polytechnic culture”, able to combine humanities and sciences and driven by a multidisciplinary approach, blending cyber science, philosophy, mathematics, the law and social science, in order to write Artificial Intelligence’s new “algorithm maps”, as well as of technical, engineering and creative minds, from manufacturing to services. We also need an education system focused on critical awareness and well-disposed towards smart cities, as well as towards all the new types of circular and civic economy, and development founded on environmental and social sustainability.
Essentially, we need to rebuild “the notion of future”, and make innovation possible once again – that’s what good policies are for.
(photo Getty Images)
Despite its creative nature and an aptitude for amazing recoveries, Italy risks running out of a resource that’s essential to development: people, and young people, above all. We are indeed heading towards a “demographic winter”, with declining birth rates and an increasingly older population – a veritable “unhappy degrowth”. And this is happening while the country is already in the thrall of a deep crisis affecting education, a crisis that’s gradually worsening as competitiveness and the quality of its economic and social growth are suffering from the ascendancy of the “knowledge economy”, as the challenges entailed by the so-called “digital economy” and the widespread presence of Artificial Intelligence demand people equipped with a substantial critical cultural background. Meanwhile, sinking graduate numbers have placed Italy at the bottom of EU ranks, and the number will keep on falling over the next years. Is a decline really unavoidable, then? Will we no longer be able to write a “future-oriented story”?
To get a clearer idea, let’s have a look at some figures, taken from recent data released by ISTAT (Il Sole24Ore and La Stampa, 8 April). In 2022, for the first time since the unification of Italy, the number of births fell to fewer than 400,000 children (393,000 to be precise), with 713,000 deaths. Basically, seven babies and thirteen deaths – almost double the number of births – for every 1,000 inhabitants.
Over the past five years, Italy lost a million people, its population dropping below 59 million (with the South ravaged by rising emigration: 629,000 inhabitant less than in 2018). Moreover, the country has grown old: the average age is of 46 years and there are more than 14 million people aged over 65 years, that is, 24% of the population (after Japan, we’re now the oldest country in the world).
“Italy is fading away”, drearily tweeted Elon Musk, while Giuseppe De Rita, president of CENSIS (the Italian research institute on social change) provided a broodier and more comprehensive account: “We are a country without any notions of a future, without motivations, without goals. The younger generations no longer have children, and they no longer get married, too. They do not even set a low bar for themselves for forming a family.” (Corriere della Sera, 8 April). Most of them suffer from precarious employment conditions, high living costs in the larger cities, scarce availability of family services (schools, nursery schools, etc.) and negligence concerning women’s employment – just a few of the reasons for this widespread lack of confidence.
Chiara Saraceno, sociologist preoccupied with social inequality themes, summarises issues and prospects as follows: “Supporting people who choose to have children implies a commitment to integrated and ongoing policies that allow young people to be able to think about the future with a reasonable amount of confidence and that create contexts able to nurture both the children born and raised within them and their parents”.
International comparisons show that “in Europe, the highest fertility rates (though mostly below the reproduction levels) and lower differences in age groups are found in those countries offering more opportunities to young people and better equipped with services able to care for newborns, as well as more congenial to working mothers. Financial assistance is important, if continuous and substantial, yet less so than early childhood services, support for gender equality, conciliation policies”.
Essentially, our issues encompass a demographic decline, a weak social fabric and a lack of reforms, as well as scarce quality and training of human resources, which affect productivity and economic competitiveness in industries and services. “In 20 years’ time there will only be 80,000 graduates”, worryingly estimates Francesco Profumo, president of philanthropic foundation Compagnia di San Paolo and former minister of Education, Universities and Research (during the Monti government), as well as former president of the Italian National Research Council.
It’s easy maths: this year, about 500,000 students, predominantly born in 2004, will take their high-school examinations – in 2004, however, the number of high-school students amounted to 800,000, which means that, in almost 20 years, the high-school student population has almost halved. Now, out of these current 500,000 students, 60% will go to university – 300,000, then – and only 60% of them will graduate in four or five years: 180,000 graduates. If this trend continues, out of the 390,000 children born this year, 240,000 will take their high-school exams in 2041. 140,000 will attend university, and 80,000 will graduate. Too few for sure.
What can we do? We can push for new demographic policies, knowing however that due to their long-range nature we’ll only see the results in 20 years’ time, and in the meantime, explains Profumo, “We must learn to manage immigration”. In other words, we need a long-term plan to attract young people to Italy, young people with a drive for development and the desire for a future, and we must train them and provide them with opportunities.
Profumo adds, “Demographic issues, just like immigration and education issues, are central to our future. Yet, political parties want immediate results. And this is certainly of no help to Italy”.
We are “a country unaware of the dynamics that govern the world”, asserts Luca De Biase (Il Sole24Ore, 8 April), that is, a country that doesn’t care about innovation, oblivious to the challenges posed by our modern times currently undergoing an intense and fierce “metamorphosis” engendered by the environmental and digital twin transition.
Nowadays, the creativity and innovative entrepreneurship generated by the economic boom, the dynamism that marked the 1980s, the commitment to Europe and the euro, and the momentum gained after the COVID-19 pandemic, are all in danger to be thwarted by this fall in confidence and by the educational and cultural deficiencies affecting the new generations.
As such, we need an education system moulded by the values and the criteria of a “polytechnic culture”, able to combine humanities and sciences and driven by a multidisciplinary approach, blending cyber science, philosophy, mathematics, the law and social science, in order to write Artificial Intelligence’s new “algorithm maps”, as well as of technical, engineering and creative minds, from manufacturing to services. We also need an education system focused on critical awareness and well-disposed towards smart cities, as well as towards all the new types of circular and civic economy, and development founded on environmental and social sustainability.
Essentially, we need to rebuild “the notion of future”, and make innovation possible once again – that’s what good policies are for.
(photo Getty Images)