2024-07-27 19:09:23
BOLZANO. The Provincial Institute of Statistics yesterday released the main indicators on the demographic change of the resident population in Alto Adige. One of the main characteristics is the aging of the population.
The increase in life expectancy together with the decrease in births, due in turn to the decline in the share of women of childbearing age, the decrease in the fertility rate and the postponement of motherhood, has led to an ever higher average age of the population and to an ever greater share of older people compared to younger people.
“The Astat survey – comments Councilor Pamer – speaks clearly. Women become mothers later and have fewer children. As we have seen, the population is aging and the birth rate is decreasing, women become mothers later and have fewer children than in the past. However, we must also consider immigration, which has a positive influence, since women from other countries have more children. We must invest in the family package, and companies must provide a good offer to allow women to return to work after maternity leave, but also working hours.
I hope they reconcile with the family.”
I dati dell’Astat
Over the course of half a century, the population of South Tyrol has increased by almost 30%: from 417,813 inhabitants in 1972 to 534,147 inhabitants in 2022. In addition to the increase in the number of inhabitants, there has also been a change in the components that determine demographic dynamics – birth rate, mortality rate and migratory movements – and consequently a change in the population structure.
Specifically, we can observe an aging of the South Tyrolean population. Compared to 50 years ago, the birth rate in the province of Bolzano has registered a notable decline: it has
from 7,722 births in 1972 to 4,912 in 2022, equal to a decrease of 36.4%. However, since the early 1980s the number of births has fluctuated around 5,000 units. The corresponding birth rate, an indicator that relates births to the total population, reached its maximum in 1965 (24.2‰). In the following ten years it dropped sharply, after which it continued to decrease but gradually reaching the value of 9.2 births per 1,000 inhabitants in 2022. This result is mainly due to three interrelated phenomena: the decrease in the share of women of childbearing age in the total population, the development of the fertility rate and the postponement of motherhood.
In the face of a population that continues to grow, there is the generation of baby boomers (i.e. women born between the second half of the 1960s and the first half of the 1970s) who have almost completely left the reproductive phase, and the younger generations who are less numerous due to the baby bust, i.e. the period in which the lowest fertility rates were recorded. On the other hand, women are having fewer and fewer children: from more than 3 children per woman in 1965 (baby boom), we have reached 2.6 children in 1972. Around the mid-1970s, the fertility rate fell below the threshold of 2.1 children – the value needed to keep the population stable. Subsequently, the rate continued to decrease, reaching its minimum in 1995 with 1.4 children per woman, after which it started to rise slightly again and in 2022 it stood at 1.6 children per woman.
In turn, the average number of children per woman is affected by the postponement of motherhood to more advanced ages. In fact, it is observed that the average age of a mother at the birth of her child has increased in the last twenty years from 30.6 years in 2002 to 31.8 years in 2022. This trend is also confirmed by the analysis of specific fertility rates, indicators that calculate the number of children born to 1,000 women in a given age group. It emerges, in fact, that the reproductive behavior of those over 30 has remained unchanged, while that of those under 30 has collapsed.
The South Tyrolean age pyramid, like the Italian one, today has the shape of an urn: due to the decrease in births, each new year is smaller than the previous one. The majority of the population is found in the central ages (people born between 1960 and 1980); after that there is a progressive
significant decrease in older vintages. DA.PA
2024-07-27 19:09:23