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No Babies?
| The NYT wakes up to what Mark Steyn said in America Alone: demography determines destiny. Italy has a birthrate of 1.2 and despite the efforts of some it isn't going to get better. If you make it to the end you'll see why America is doing better: our society's flexibility in the job market and the expectation that men will help around the home serve to increase the fertility rate. Just the first few paragraphs of a very, very long piece here: |
IT WAS A SPECTACULAR LATE-MAY AFTERNOON IN SOUTHERN ITALY, but the streets of Laviano a gloriously situated hamlet ranged across a few folds in the mountains of the Campania region were deserted. There were no day-trippers from Naples, no tourists to take in the views up the steep slopes, the olive trees on terraces, the ruins of the 11th-century fortress with wild poppies spotting its grassy flanks like flecks of blood. And there were no locals in sight either. The town has housing enough to support a population of 3,000, but fewer than 1,600 live here, and every year the number drops. Rocco Falivena, Lavianos 56-year-old mayor, strolled down the middle of the street, outlining for me the towns demographics and explaining why, although the place is more than a thousand years old, its buildings all look so new. In 1980 an earthquake struck, taking out nearly every structure and killing 300 people, including Falivenas own parents. Then from tragedy arose the scent of possibility, of a future. Money came from the national government in Rome, and from former residents who had emigrated to the U.S. and elsewhere. The locals found jobs rebuilding their town. But when the construction ended, so did the work, and the exodus of residents continued as before.
| (Around 1961), Europe represented 12.5 percent of the worlds population. Today it is 7.2 percent, and if current trends continue, by 2050 only 5 percent of the world will be European. |
When Falivena took office in 2002 for his second stint as mayor, two numbers caught his attention. Four: that was how many babies were born in the town the year before. And five: the number of children enrolled in first grade at the school, never mind that the school served two additional communities as well. I knew what was my first job, to try to save the school, Falivena told me. Because a village that does not have a school is a dead village. He racked his brain and came up with a desperate idea: pay women to have babies. And not just a token amount, either; in 2003 Falivena let it be known he would pay 10,000 euros (about $15,000) for every woman local or immigrant, married or single who would give birth to and rear a child in the village. The baby bonus, as he calls it, is structured to root new citizens in the town: a mother gets 1,500 euros when her baby is born, then a 1,500-euro payment on each of the childs first four birthdays and a final 2,500 euros the day the child enrolls in first grade. Falivena has a publicists instincts, and he said he hoped the plan would attract media attention. It did, generating news across Italy and as far away as Australia.
Finally, as we loitered in front of a mustard-colored building up the street from the towns empty main square, a car came by. Falivena a small, muscular man in a polo shirt, with gray hair and a deeply creased, tanned face flagged it down, for the young woman behind the wheel, Salvia Daniela, was one of the very people he was looking for. They exchanged a few words, and we followed Daniela back to her apartment to meet her family. Daniela, who is 31, and her 36-year-old husband, Gerardo Grande, have two children: Pasquale, 10, and Gaia, who is 5 and was one of the first baby bonus babies. Daniela and Grande say they are committed to being a traditional family, but it isnt easy. Grande works for a development company and manages a bar in the evenings so that his wife can devote herself to the home. Their apartment, though cheery (with lots of enlarged photos of the kids), is cramped. The baby bonus helped us, Grande told me. He added, gesturing toward Falivena, We think this man is a great mayor.
Posted by: Steve White 2008-06-29 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=242856 |
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