Voting with your feet: Italy’s young emigrants and the policies needed to fight decline
In economic policy jargon, you might hear about “foot voting” or “voting with your feet”, not a criticism of ill-considered voting but an expression of how an individual dissatisfied with the policy of a given public administration can demonstrate their opposition, their preferences, by emigrating elsewhere. The phrase, central to the studies of American economist Charles Tiebout, was often used by US President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s to recommend competitive tax policy between US states in the race to reduce taxes in order to attract people and investment. Prominent economists such as Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman had written about it, and contemporary Italian debate on differentiated regional autonomy is also influenced by this liberal-liberalist approach.
For example, Italians from southern cities who choose treatment in Milan, but also Turin or Bologna “vote with their feet”, in search of better services in the public and private hospitals of the North (but with costs borne by the southern regions, with their run-down yet expensive healthcare). Everyone from Milan who would rather go and live in Pavia, Magenta, Corbetta or Monza than suffer intolerable increases in the cost of living votes with their feet. Pensioners who preferred to change their residence to Tunisia and Portugal (and now, after the Portuguese reforms, they’re looking at Greece or even San Marino) to get a substantial reduction in the tax burden on their incomes vote with their feet. Also voting with their feet, with great effort and suffering from the separation, are those who abandon their ill-served municipalities and choose other, towns and cities with better infrastructure: 49.3% of Italian municipalities have a negative variation in population, with peaks of 89.3% in Basilicata, compared to just 15.2% in Trentino, an autonomous province that is well governed in terms of quality of life (“Italy’s depopulated inland municipalities: inhabitants flee, over-80s remain”, headlines IlSole24Ore, 17 March).
The companies that leave Italy and choose to invest in other countries also vote with their feet (the economic news provides ample evidence).
Above all, the 1.8 million young Italians (32% of the 25–34 age group) who have left Italy in the last 20 years to seek better working and living conditions elsewhere according to Censis voted with their feet, as do others of their age who continue to do so. This is demonstrated, among other things, by a report conducted by Astraricerche for ManagerItalia and Kilpatrick and published by Il Sole24Ore (13 March), according to which among expatriate business executives, only 22.8% want to return to Italy (it was 43.6% in a similar survey ten years ago) and all the rest are happy to stay abroad (33.7% with particular conviction) because in our country “there is a lack of valid professional opportunities with respect to my needs” or “because Italy is in decline and will never be able to recover” or “because there is no meritocracy”.
This volume of “votes with feet”, due to the quality of healthcare, tax burden, quality of life or opportunities for individuals and families to grow, should represent loud alarm bells regarding the risks of decline to avoid, imbalances to correct and reforms to begin implementing. Yet there’s little trace of it in our public debate, an irresponsible shortcoming.
Looking to the future, the most shocking figures concern young people.
Italy is right in the middle of a demographic winter, and the fertility rate of each woman is just 1.24, among the lowest in the world and in any case far from the replacement rate of 2.1% (i.e. 2.1 children per woman would be needed to keep the population from decreasing). In 2023, fewer than 400,000 children were born for the first time (in 2008 there were 600,000; in 1964, just after the height of the economic boom, there were 1 million).
For more than 30 years, in short, this ageing country has recorded more deaths than births (746,000 in 2020). “An Italy without children”, summarises Il Foglio (11 March).
Not only is the demographic weight of the coming generation decreasing, but many are leaving, worsening the overall picture. And fewer young people, long-term, means less productivity, less innovation, greater burden on the public coffers (on our taxes, consequently on our debt) due to burdens on the social security and health systems.
It is true that the ingenuity of the Italian people still keeps the machinery of production on its feet, as Marco Fortis illustrates, using data to show how “Italy is first in Europe for per capita GDP growth, despite the falling birth rate” (IlSole24Ore, 12 March) and therefore still has innovative and productive energy. But these are situations that can’t be permitted to continue long-term.
And so?
Ambitious, growth-oriented policy decisions are required, to finally make our country attractive not only to our young people, but also to all those who may look to Italy as the place to find better opportunities for work, life, enterprise, inclusion and sustainable development.
Policies for the family, with all the consequences in terms of services and incentives to reconcile work with parenthood. Well-governed immigration policies. And a general commitment, cutting across all political forces, to rebuild a robust social capital of trust, to stimulate a positive development culture. Trust is the key to positive demographic choice. Families and children are built on trust.
This is to be done without playing on fear, but by demonstrating – above all to young people of both sexes – that we’re working on a better future for them.
This was the widespread climate in post-war Italy, the Italy of Reconstruction and Recovery. Despite concerns about the dangers of the Cold War between the West and the Soviet world, social problems and political tensions, people invested, worked, built families and homes for them to live in, improved schools and, in time, launched public health care. They were all aware, albeit with different accents and cultural, economic and political positions, that a country’s development depends on investment, on innovation, on the spread of new technologies, but above all on the role and will of the citizens who go, stay, arrive – who plan, who act.
So people were voting with their feet even then, heading for the places of work where a better Italy was being built.
(Photo Getty Images)
In economic policy jargon, you might hear about “foot voting” or “voting with your feet”, not a criticism of ill-considered voting but an expression of how an individual dissatisfied with the policy of a given public administration can demonstrate their opposition, their preferences, by emigrating elsewhere. The phrase, central to the studies of American economist Charles Tiebout, was often used by US President Ronald Reagan in the 1980s to recommend competitive tax policy between US states in the race to reduce taxes in order to attract people and investment. Prominent economists such as Friedrich von Hayek and Milton Friedman had written about it, and contemporary Italian debate on differentiated regional autonomy is also influenced by this liberal-liberalist approach.
For example, Italians from southern cities who choose treatment in Milan, but also Turin or Bologna “vote with their feet”, in search of better services in the public and private hospitals of the North (but with costs borne by the southern regions, with their run-down yet expensive healthcare). Everyone from Milan who would rather go and live in Pavia, Magenta, Corbetta or Monza than suffer intolerable increases in the cost of living votes with their feet. Pensioners who preferred to change their residence to Tunisia and Portugal (and now, after the Portuguese reforms, they’re looking at Greece or even San Marino) to get a substantial reduction in the tax burden on their incomes vote with their feet. Also voting with their feet, with great effort and suffering from the separation, are those who abandon their ill-served municipalities and choose other, towns and cities with better infrastructure: 49.3% of Italian municipalities have a negative variation in population, with peaks of 89.3% in Basilicata, compared to just 15.2% in Trentino, an autonomous province that is well governed in terms of quality of life (“Italy’s depopulated inland municipalities: inhabitants flee, over-80s remain”, headlines IlSole24Ore, 17 March).
The companies that leave Italy and choose to invest in other countries also vote with their feet (the economic news provides ample evidence).
Above all, the 1.8 million young Italians (32% of the 25–34 age group) who have left Italy in the last 20 years to seek better working and living conditions elsewhere according to Censis voted with their feet, as do others of their age who continue to do so. This is demonstrated, among other things, by a report conducted by Astraricerche for ManagerItalia and Kilpatrick and published by Il Sole24Ore (13 March), according to which among expatriate business executives, only 22.8% want to return to Italy (it was 43.6% in a similar survey ten years ago) and all the rest are happy to stay abroad (33.7% with particular conviction) because in our country “there is a lack of valid professional opportunities with respect to my needs” or “because Italy is in decline and will never be able to recover” or “because there is no meritocracy”.
This volume of “votes with feet”, due to the quality of healthcare, tax burden, quality of life or opportunities for individuals and families to grow, should represent loud alarm bells regarding the risks of decline to avoid, imbalances to correct and reforms to begin implementing. Yet there’s little trace of it in our public debate, an irresponsible shortcoming.
Looking to the future, the most shocking figures concern young people.
Italy is right in the middle of a demographic winter, and the fertility rate of each woman is just 1.24, among the lowest in the world and in any case far from the replacement rate of 2.1% (i.e. 2.1 children per woman would be needed to keep the population from decreasing). In 2023, fewer than 400,000 children were born for the first time (in 2008 there were 600,000; in 1964, just after the height of the economic boom, there were 1 million).
For more than 30 years, in short, this ageing country has recorded more deaths than births (746,000 in 2020). “An Italy without children”, summarises Il Foglio (11 March).
Not only is the demographic weight of the coming generation decreasing, but many are leaving, worsening the overall picture. And fewer young people, long-term, means less productivity, less innovation, greater burden on the public coffers (on our taxes, consequently on our debt) due to burdens on the social security and health systems.
It is true that the ingenuity of the Italian people still keeps the machinery of production on its feet, as Marco Fortis illustrates, using data to show how “Italy is first in Europe for per capita GDP growth, despite the falling birth rate” (IlSole24Ore, 12 March) and therefore still has innovative and productive energy. But these are situations that can’t be permitted to continue long-term.
And so?
Ambitious, growth-oriented policy decisions are required, to finally make our country attractive not only to our young people, but also to all those who may look to Italy as the place to find better opportunities for work, life, enterprise, inclusion and sustainable development.
Policies for the family, with all the consequences in terms of services and incentives to reconcile work with parenthood. Well-governed immigration policies. And a general commitment, cutting across all political forces, to rebuild a robust social capital of trust, to stimulate a positive development culture. Trust is the key to positive demographic choice. Families and children are built on trust.
This is to be done without playing on fear, but by demonstrating – above all to young people of both sexes – that we’re working on a better future for them.
This was the widespread climate in post-war Italy, the Italy of Reconstruction and Recovery. Despite concerns about the dangers of the Cold War between the West and the Soviet world, social problems and political tensions, people invested, worked, built families and homes for them to live in, improved schools and, in time, launched public health care. They were all aware, albeit with different accents and cultural, economic and political positions, that a country’s development depends on investment, on innovation, on the spread of new technologies, but above all on the role and will of the citizens who go, stay, arrive – who plan, who act.
So people were voting with their feet even then, heading for the places of work where a better Italy was being built.
(Photo Getty Images)