The pandemic crisis and the decline of births in Italy: a causal-effect analysis of the pandemic shock

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic crisis has produced effects on demographic dynamics, accelerating the depression of births already underway in Italy since 2008. From the provisional data published by Istat, the year 2021 certifies yet another negative milestone of lower birth rate ever recorded in the history of Italy. In the following study we show new empirical evidence of the negative impact of the pandemic crisis on the birth rate in our country. In recent years, Italy's birth rate has been among the worst in Europe. The collapse in birth rates is also linked to a widely documented structural phenomenon: the baby-boom generations of women have left childbearing age, replaced by smaller and smaller cohorts born in the baby bust years. In fact, the number of births depends not only on the average propensity to have children, but also on the number of parents of childbearing age. In an already articulated and complex decision-making process, the pandemic and its media narrative have added further layers of uncertainty causing yet another postponement of life plans. While the pandemic has hit our country particularly hard in terms of deaths, especially among the older generations, the health emergency has also intervened forcefully in demographic behaviour. Our aim was to check whether there is a link between the pandemic and the decision to have children. Using updated birth data and pre-pandemic data, we developed a causal effect analysis on regional time series that allowed us to identify the impact of the Covid-19 shock on births, net of structural trends in the phenomenon. Subsequently, we exploited the pandemic shock to estimate its impact on the lower-performing regional family welfare systems (Mezzogiorno), through the difference-in-differences (dif-in-dif) treatment effect estimation model.