UNIFI Research Unit: Raffaele Guetto (PI), Daniele Vignoli
Project led by the University of Trento (Agnese Vitali (PI), Stefani Scherer, Raffaele Grotti)
Brief description of the project
Since 2016, the Italian population has been declining, and Italy is leading global population aging. Children are essential for ensuring the continuity of society and for reducing the old-age dependency ratio to maintain the balance of the welfare state accounts. Low fertility is largely involuntary in Italy. The vast majority of Italians desire to have two children but, on average, end up having only slightly more than one. The gap between desired and actual fertility is the highest in Europe. Similarly, even though only a small percentage of Italian women declare that they do not want children, more than one in five end up having none. The disparities between ideal and actual family sizes and between voluntary and actual childlessness raise two concerns. First, a well-being penalty linked to the unmet desire for children may exist. Second, obstacles preventing couples from having (more) children may exist, constituting an opportunity for policy reforms.
This project, WelFerPoli, will: 1) shed light on eventual well-being penalties among individuals with smaller-than-desired family size or who are involuntarily childless; 2) investigate to what extent public policies can intervene to remove the obstacles preventing individuals from achieving their desired fertility, thereby improving their wellbeing and ensuring a just society and a sustainable welfare state in the future.
These two objectives will be achieved by analyzing secondary data sources for Italy, including underused longitudinal studies. This analysis will be complemented by primary data collection, integrated with a factorial survey experiment conducted on a representative sample of over 5,000 Italian men and women. The project will carry out an ex-ante evaluation of possible fertility-friendly policy reforms as well as the ex-post evaluation of an Italian best practice: the integrated set of policies implemented since the 1990s in the Autonomous Province of Trento.
By raising awareness of the well-being penalties associated with unmet desires for children, WelFerPoli has the potential to justify investments in family and fertility policies. It can also provide valuable insights to policymakers on the policy mix that could boost fertility rates in Italy.