Present and future

And so, after an anomalous summer of electoral campaigns, we will close 2022 with a new parliament and a new government, in a difficult autumn for everyone: bills that rise, fears that advance, worries that make their way into a large part of the Italian population.
It will be important for the new executive to govern with an eye to the short term, because there is a need for quick and immediate responses, and at the same time with an eye to the long term, because every solution cannot ignore the need to preserve the future of those who will come after us.

From this point of view, taking a look at the photograph of the country we will be in a few decades is not a simple exercise in style: it is a way to see where we are going and what we are becoming. A way to become aware and learn something about ourselves. Sure, no one has a glass ball and it's just predictions, but the numbers say they're more reliable predictions than we might think. And on the other hand it is a future that we already see in the present: fewer residents, more elderly people, ever smaller families.

In 2021 there were 59.2 million of us. In eight years, in 2030, we will be 57.9 million. In 2050 in 54.2 million. In 2070 in 47.7 million. In half a century, 11.5 million residents will be lost compared to today.
And it is, say the statisticians, a "median" datum: that is, reality could be better than this, but it could also be much worse, drawing a collapse of biblical proportions.

Families will have an ever smaller average number of members: fewer couples with children and more couples without.
The falling birth rate in which we have been immersed up to our necks for some time will manifest all its consequences and the number of new births will continue to remain terribly low compared to the past.

Even in the scenario which contemplates a growth in fertility from 1.25 children per woman in 2021 to 1.55 in 2070, the maximum number of births would be set at 424,000 in 2038, to then decrease due to the lower number of women than at that point they will be of childbearing age.
Even in the most favorable birth and death scenarios, the projected number of births would not compensate for that of deaths. The damage is already done, one might say.

The ratio of people of working age (15-64) to non-working age (0-14 and 65 and over) will go from around three to two in 2021 to around one to one in 2050. The year in which people over 65 will be 35 % of the population (boom in the demand for assistance) and there will be over 10 million people alone.
And let it be clear, for the avoidance of doubt: migratory flows will not be able to counterbalance the negative sign of natural dynamics.

All these numbers (source ISTAT) tell of the need to govern, among other things, the consequent effects on the labor market, on economic and social security planning, on maintaining the level of welfare necessary for the country. Governing, however terribly complicated it is, with one eye on the present and one on the future.
A need that too often has been forgotten.

Stefano Caredda
NP October 2022