Lots of kids or money

In Italy, the government is worried. So worried that they have budgeted hundreds of thousands of dollars in search of a logical solution to their problem – to no avail. The problem? Italian women do not want to be a Momma Mia with a passel of kids under feet. The women want their feet to be shod in fine Italian leather, in the workforce and virtually child free.
Therein lies the problem. For more than 20 years, not enough Italian babies have been born to replace the population. On the whole, Italian women don’t want more than one child. “Too costly,” they say, “too limiting on career, portfolio, accumulation of material goods and plans to travel.” They simply have too many other interests to stop long enough to have a second or third child. Admittedly, “it’s a little selfish,” said Rosa Andolfi, the mother a 3-year-old quoted in an Associated Press story. Any suggestion that she help raise the current Italian birthrate of 1.2 children per woman, by having a second child, appalls Andolfi.
Seeing the Italian population dwindling below the 2.1 reproductive rate which demographers say is requisite to reproduce a nation’s population, has scared the Italian government into desperate measures. Fantastic financial incentives await new parents: Expanded tax breaks, child-care alternatives, maternity and paternity benefits, even a full year of salary for a half-year of leave. Some districts offer cash supplements of up to $350 per month for mothers who want to stay home an additional nine months after the child is born.
Alas! It is all in vain. The majority of Italian women still refuse to bear more than one child. Others have absolutely no interest in having even one child.
The Italian women are not alone. The populations of 39 developed countries are projected to shrink in the next 50 years. Many others will remain essentially the same according to projections made by the United Nations Population Division. (The United States, with a 2.0 birth rate is not on the list.)
In spite of these dire projections it is hardly time to quit worrying about the population explosion. Rapid growth is projected in 48 undeveloped countries such as India and China which will produce 21 and 12 percent of the increase respectively, according to the U.N. report.
Italy needs more people, India needs fewer.
Review the U.N. conclusions again: “The population of more developed regions … is projected to be smaller. The population of less developed regions … is projected to rise steadily.” In one respect, the problem is not population growth or shrinkage – the problem is national development.
Development of a country ultimately results in a decline in the nation’s birthrate. As women have more resources and become aware of other options, they have fewer children. If the Indian government mandated that every child completed high school or college and most women entered the work force full time, it would increase national productivity in everything except children – and India could slowly move out of the “underdeveloped, overpopulate” category.
By the same token, development of a country contributes to the decline of a nation’s birthrate, according to the U.N. projections. With its low birthrate, Italy’s strength, productivity and energy as a developed nation will decline. To maintain current levels of productivity, Italy has opened its borders to immigrants, but it is not enough. The Italian government needs to bite the bullet and follow the U.N. projections to their logical conclusion. Instead of paying rich Italian women for having babies, the Italian government should take away the rampant learning, luxuries and leisure time and replace them with illiteracy, poverty and drudgery. Make Italy into a third world, under-developed nation such as India, and tongue-in-cheek logic predicts even the Italian national birth rate will increase. No one guarantees that any of the well-shod Italian women (or their men) will embrace such a drastic change, but it does seem to work in India and China for producing lots of babies, if not material goods.
(Joan Hershberger is a reporter at the News-Times.)