Secular culture has benefited Italy to the point of putting them on a collision course for a population collapse by the year 2065 due to the declining birthrate beyond replacement levels.
According to the Italian Statistics Bureau (ISTAT), Italy’s population will drop a total of 10% between 2017 and 2065 — 60.6 million to 54.1 million. “Taking into account the variability associated with demographic events, the population estimate by 2065 ranges from a minimum of 46.4 million to a maximum of 62,” they report. “The chance of a population increase scenario by 2065 is 9%.”
The news comes as Italy’s birthrate continues to decline. In 2010, the birthrate stood at 1.46 children per woman; it now stands at just 1.34. Even if the birthrate were to increase in accordance with projections, it “will not be enough to offset projected deaths,” according to the analysis:
In the median scenario, the natural change reaches a value of -200 thousand after a few years of projection, it is then projected to -300 and -400 thousand, respectively, in the medium and long-term.
Fertility is projected to rise from 1.34 to 1.59 children per woman between 2017 and 2065, according to the median scenario. However, uncertainty increases over the projection period. The 90% confidence interval projected to 2065 is rather high and ranges between 1.25 and 1.93 children per woman.
Attempting to curtail their below replacement-level birthrates, Italy launched a pro-fertility campaign in 2016 extolling the beauty of parenthood. Predictably, the feminists responded with outrage.
The campaign’s official website stated: “The first Fertility Day will be celebrated to attract attention to the topic of fertility and its protection … to underline the danger of falling birth rates in our country” and promote “the beauty of maternity and paternity.” The campaign also promises to provide “medical help for those people who are having problems conceiving.”
Having reality smacked in their face in such a spirit didn’t go over well with feminists. On cue, the buzzwords “patriarchy” and “chauvinism” were echoing across the cyber-sphere. Writing in Extra NewsFeed, feminist Giulia Blasi went as far as to say that Italy’s low birthrate somehow stems from their strict abortion policy, accusing the Health Minister Lorenzin of pushing “a campaign that treats all women as little more than walking incubators.”
“[The campaign] is the stuff of dystopian novels and fascist propaganda,” writes Blasi, “something Benito Mussolini was quite good at in times when contraception was unavailable and women did not have the right to vote, much less work outside the home.”
Another group of Italian feminists penned an open letter calling Lorenzin’s campaign “confusing and dangerous,” saying it harkens back to a time of “social and cultural obscurantism that condemned women to secondary roles and functions, in subordination to and dependence on men.”
Writing for The Guardian, Annalisa Coppolaro-Nowell slammed the campaign as not only a sexist onslaught of the oppressive patriarchy, but also a resurgence of Mussolini fascism.
“It all sounds so similar to the fascist slogans of the 1930s, when posters on the walls incited women to give more children to the fatherland,” she laments. “Many cannot believe that a female minister has launched such a sexist, ageist, anachronistic campaign in a country where many other urgent problems remain to be addressed.”