Every day, the correspondents’ club describes how the same current event is illustrated in two countries.
There were 723,000 births in France in 2022 according to INSEE, 19,000 less than the previous year. France is not the only country to face the decline in the birth rate. Japan and Italy are also trying to find solutions to remedy the drop in births.
Many brakes in Japan
In Japan, births are decreasing from year to year, this drop in the birth rate is accentuated by the various crises, including the three years of Covid-19. Faced with such a situation, the government is forced to act. Japan has been battling a declining birth rate for 40 years, but the situation is deteriorating year after year. Just under 800,000 babies were born in Japan in 2022, that is to say barely more than in France, despite a Japanese population almost twice as large.
Three years of Covid-19 crisis and deteriorating social relations have worsened the situation, reducing dating and marriages, a prerequisite before a baby was born in Japan, but the circumstances were already very bad before. The first cause put forward by young people who give up having children is the financial cost, against a background of stagnating wages and greater precariousness of men’s jobs. Women tend to look for partners who have a good job and the salary that goes with it before committing themselves. These are very calculated marriages. And even if Japan does not admit it, couples who nevertheless have sufficient financial means consider that becoming parents is a brake on their freedom.
In Japan, medical care is in most localities free for children up to 15 years old. Public school is free, childcare costs are now partly free and there are family allowances. But obviously that is not enough. The current government, which finally claims to take the measure of the issue, promises a policy of financial assistance of an unprecedented dimension. However, even high by 17%, at 3,500 euros, the birth premium will still not be enough to cover the cost of childbirth, which is entirely borne by the parents.
The government is still reluctant to take into account the number of children in the calculation of income taxes and does not yet know how it will raise the notoriously insufficient family allowances for children when they reach adolescence. And even if the economic causes were resolved and the number of children per woman were to increase, the total number of women of childbearing age is in any case insufficient to hope for a significant rebound.
Italy has the lowest fertility rate in Europe
The latest data from ISTAT, the local INSEE, is due out this month, but Italy still expects to break a record in 2022. In Italy, the fertility rate stands at 1.25 c t is the weakest in Europe with Spain, but Italy is also a country that is seeing its population decline. It has fallen below 60 million inhabitants: there are still more than 700,000 deaths and fewer and fewer births, barely 400,000. This represents a fall of 25% less than 10 years ago. In comparison, in France there were 740,000 births in 2021. Another factor, there are also fewer and fewer foreigners in Italy, the country has lost 140,000. Immigration could therefore be a solution to fight against the Italian demographic winter.
First reason put forward by most studies, the cost of the child: it’s too expensive! The second reason is the fear of losing one’s job and the third reason is the lack of services for families. In Italy, we are less helped than in France even if family allowances have just been created: a revolution which is still very difficult to put in place. In Italy it is much more complicated to organize your family and professional life. The fight against the pay gap between men and women has only just begun, there is no equality.
Companies play the game less than in France even if the current government asks them to sign an ethical charter and has just increased paternity leave from 10 to 60 days. A final reality, women who have a child have it late and can therefore have parents in poor health who cannot take care of the children. In Italy, crèches or other structures are absolutely not as developed as elsewhere. ISTAT continues to make alarming projections and does so on purpose: if nothing changes, in 2070 Italy would have 40 million inhabitants, almost twice as many as France, which would have 77 million inhabitants!