Southern demography

南歐人口

Baby gap

嬰兒差距

Why southern Europe has fewer babies than the north

為什么南歐的嬰兒比北歐少

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THE MUSEO DEGLI INNOCENTI in Florence has an unusual name and hosts an unusual display: a collection of small broken objects, mostly medallions. They were split in two when a baby was delivered to Florence’s hospital for foundlings. Half the object, known as a segnale di riconoscimento, was kept at the hospital—in reality, a children’s home—while the other went to the mother. Should she wish to reclaim the child, she would have proof it was hers. Many of the children were born out of wedlock. But others were from families without the means to feed another mouth.

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佛羅倫薩的孤兒院博物館(Museo degli Innocenti)有一個不尋常的名字，并舉辦了一場不尋常的展覽:一系列的小碎物，大多是獎?wù)?。?dāng)一個嬰兒被送到佛羅倫薩的棄兒醫(yī)院時，這些獎?wù)卤灰环譃槎?。其中的一半被稱為segnale di riconoscimento（信物），保存在醫(yī)院——實(shí)際上是一所孤兒院——而另一半則交給了母親。如果她想要回孩子，她會有證據(jù)證明孩子是自己的。許多孩子是私生子，但也有來自沒有能力養(yǎng)活孩子的家庭。

The segnali are reminders of a time when Italy had an excess of births. Today, in common with many other European countries, it has hardly any. Its fertility rate (the average number of babies each Italian woman can expect to have) has dropped from 2.66 in 1964 to 1.24 in 2020. In one region, Sardinia, it is below 1. This makes Italy part of a band of ultra-low fertility across southern Europe, from Portugal and Spain (1.40 and 1.19) in the west to Greece and Cyprus (1.39 and 1.36) in the east. As 2.1 children per woman are needed to keep numbers stable, these countries must have more babies, admit more immigrants or see their populations dwindle.

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segnali讓人們想起了意大利人口過剩的時代。如今，和許多其他歐洲國家一樣，它幾乎沒有新生兒。意大利生育率(每個意大利婦女預(yù)期生育的嬰兒的平均數(shù)量)已經(jīng)從1964年的2.66下降到2020年的1.24。在撒丁島，這一數(shù)據(jù)低于1。這使得意大利成為南歐超低生育率國家的一員，從西部的葡萄牙和西班牙(1.40和1.19)到東部的希臘和塞浦路斯(1.39和1.36)。由于每個婦女需要生育2.1個孩子來保持人口穩(wěn)定，這些國家必須有更多的嬰兒，接納更多的移民，不然人口就會逐漸減少。

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Only the first of these options appeals to Europe’s rightwing populists. So they are keen to find ways to persuade native-born women to have bigger families. Few have put such emphasis on the birth rate as the Brothers of Italy, the hard-right party whose leader, Giorgia Meloni, is the country’s new prime minister. The encouragement to Italians to multiply flows in part from the party’s opposition to unauthorised immigration. “Support for the birth rate and the family” was top of a list of 15 policy objectives in its electoral manifesto.

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只有第一個選項(xiàng)對歐洲右翼民粹主義者有吸引力。因此，他們熱衷于尋找方法來說服本地女性擁有更大的家庭。很少有像意大利兄弟黨那樣重視生育率，意大利兄弟黨是一個極右翼政黨，其領(lǐng)導(dǎo)人焦?fàn)柤獘I·梅洛尼是該國的新總理。鼓勵意大利人增加移民的部分原因是該黨反對非法移民?！爸С稚屎图彝ァ笔瞧涓傔x宣言中15項(xiàng)政策目標(biāo)的第一項(xiàng)。

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Constrained by Italy’s huge gross public debt, of around 147% of GDP, Ms Meloni’s government has so far had limited scope for realising its aims. The budget for next year nevertheless includes some changes that the finance minister, Giancarlo Giorgetti, has suggested are just the beginning. They include an increase in child benefits for the first child and for families with more than three children; a modest extension of maternity leave; reductions in the VAT on baby-care products; and changes in the pensionable age so that the more children a woman has, the earlier she will be able to retire.

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受意大利高達(dá)GDP 147%的巨額公共債務(wù)約束，梅洛尼女士的政府迄今為止實(shí)現(xiàn)其競選目標(biāo)的能力有限。盡管如此，明年的政府預(yù)算也包括了一些變化，財政部長賈恩卡洛·焦?fàn)柦艿僬J(rèn)為這僅僅是個開始。改變包括增加第一個孩子和有三個以上孩子的家庭的兒童福利；適度延長產(chǎn)假；降低嬰兒護(hù)理產(chǎn)品的增值稅；改變退休年齡，已達(dá)到婦女生育的孩子越多，就能越早退休的目標(biāo)。

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The new facts of life

新的生活狀況

In the worldview of the new right, feminism has given rise to generations of women who would rather work and play than raise children. But this narrative ignores two crucial facts. The first is that the most staunchly feminist countries, those in northern Europe, now have some of the continent’s highest birth rates. And the second is that women are often not opposed to having children; they are having fewer than they say they want, mostly for economic reasons.

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在新右派的世界觀中，女權(quán)主義造就了一代又一代寧愿工作和玩耍也不愿撫養(yǎng)孩子的女性。但這種說法忽略了兩個關(guān)鍵事實(shí)。首先，最堅定的女權(quán)主義國家，即北歐國家，如今擁有歐洲大陸最高的生育率。第二，女性通常不反對生孩子；她們實(shí)際得到的比她們宣稱想要得到的要少，主要是因?yàn)榻?jīng)濟(jì)層面的原因。

Globally, a fairly robust law has long linked national wealth and birth rates: as countries become richer, birth rates fall. But a group of researchers at the Centre for Economic Policy Research argue that among the richest nations the opposite now applies. In the OECD, a club mostly of rich countries, there is now a positive correlation between GDP per head and fertility, they find (see chart). The most likely explanation for this is complex. As women enter the workforce, they increase economic output with their labour and talent. They may also then vote for governments that spend money making it easier to be both a parent and an employee. Spending on family support also correlates positively with fertility. Generous paid maternity leave is one such policy; and the evidence that supports spending on child care is even stronger. If women cannot easily work in the early years of a child’s life, the work-family trade-off remains ironclad.

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在全球范圍內(nèi)，一項(xiàng)相當(dāng)健全的法律長期以來一直將國家財富和生育率聯(lián)系在一起：隨著國家變得更加富裕，生育率下降。但倫敦經(jīng)濟(jì)政策研究中心的一組研究人員認(rèn)為，在最富裕的國家中，如今的情況正好相反。他們發(fā)現(xiàn)，在主要由富裕國家組成的經(jīng)合組織中，人均GDP和生育率之間存在正相關(guān)關(guān)系(見圖表)。對此，最有可能的解釋是復(fù)雜的。隨著婦女進(jìn)入勞動力市場，她們憑借自己的勞動和才能增加了經(jīng)濟(jì)產(chǎn)出。然后，她們也可能投票支持花錢讓工作和生活更容易兼顧的政府。家庭支持支出也與生育率正相關(guān)。充足的帶薪產(chǎn)假就是這樣一項(xiàng)政策；支持兒童保健的政府支出證據(jù)甚至更加有力。如果女性在孩子生命的最初幾年難以輕松地工作，那么工作與家庭的權(quán)衡仍然是不容置疑的。

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In Malta—once called “more Catholic than the pope” but now boasting Europe’s lowest fertility rate, at 1.13—women are still more than 30 times more likely than men to drop out of work to look after their families. The tension between money, career and family can be acute. Marie Briguglio, a former senior civil servant, chose to postpone having her only child until she was 38. She says it was about the opportunity cost: had she had children earlier her rise through the administration would have been jeopardised.

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在馬耳他——曾經(jīng)被稱為“比教皇還天主教”的國家，如今自豪地?fù)碛?.13，全歐洲最低的生育率——女性仍然比男性多約30倍的可能性放棄工作來照顧家庭。金錢、事業(yè)和家庭之間的矛盾可能會很尖銳。前高級公務(wù)員瑪麗·布里格利奧(Marie Briguglio)選擇將唯一的孩子的出生推遲到38歲。她說這與機(jī)會成本有關(guān):如果她早點(diǎn)生孩子，自己在政府中的地位就會受到損害。

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“I played the lottery every week after my second son was born,” says Inés, a small-business owner in Madrid. Having failed to score the winning ticket, she decided not to have the third child she would have liked. The gap in Spain between the number of children born (1.19 per woman) and the number desired (around two) is one of Europe’s highest. Alicia Adserà, an economist at Princeton, looks for explanations wider than those (like child care, maternity leave, child tax breaks or men’s housework) directly related to family. She says that broader conditions—in particular the jobs market—play a critical role too.

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“在我第二個兒子出生后，我每周都去買彩票，”馬德里的小企業(yè)主伊內(nèi)斯說。由于未能獲得中獎彩票，她決定不要自己期望中的第三個孩子。西班牙的生育率(每名婦女1.19)和理想生育率(大約2)之間的差距是歐洲最高的之一。普林斯頓大學(xué)的經(jīng)濟(jì)學(xué)家艾麗西婭·阿德斯拉(Alicia Adserà)尋求除了家庭之外的 (如兒童保育、產(chǎn)假、兒童稅收減免或男性家務(wù))更廣泛的解釋。她說，更廣泛的條件——尤其是就業(yè)市場——也起著關(guān)鍵作用。

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Spanish women surged into education and work after the “national Catholic” dictatorship of Francisco Franco, who died in 1975. The country built a wave of child-care centres, and today subsidises them with a voucher each month. Spanish maternity leave is relatively miserly (16 weeks) by European standards; but men get the same amount as women. Grandparents provide a great deal of help with children, and for richer families, immigration (especially from Latin America) provides a source of affordable nannies.

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在弗朗西斯科·佛朗哥(1975年去世)的“國家天主教”獨(dú)裁統(tǒng)治后，西班牙女性涌入教育和工作領(lǐng)域。該國建立了一批兒童保育中心，如今每個月都用代金券補(bǔ)貼它們。以歐洲標(biāo)準(zhǔn)衡量，西班牙產(chǎn)假相對較少(16周)；但男人和女人得到產(chǎn)假的一樣多。祖父母為孩子提供了大量的幫助，對于較富裕的家庭來說，移民(尤其是來自拉丁美洲的移民)提供了負(fù)擔(dān)得起的保姆來源。

But despite all that, Spain lags begin in one crucial area: opportunities for the young. The youth unemployment rate is among the highest in the rich world, at around 35%. A study of the years 2008-16 found Spanish youngsters worked for almost eight years stringing together temporary contracts before landing a permanent one. This delays marriage as well as childbirth; almost half of 25- to 34-year-olds now live with their parents. When Spaniards do finally couple up they have experienced the freedoms of childless adulthood for a decade. Around a fifth of women go on to have no children at all, a big driver of the overall drop in fertility. For those who take the plunge, the average age of women at first birth, at 31, is one of the highest in Europe, along with Italy and Malta. Many stop there; one-child families are so common that El Mundo, a conservative newspaper, envisioned a future country “without brothers and sisters”.

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盡管如此，西班牙在一個關(guān)鍵領(lǐng)域開始落后:年輕人的機(jī)會。西班牙年輕人的失業(yè)率是富裕國家中最高的，約為35%。一項(xiàng)2008年至2016年的研究發(fā)現(xiàn)，西班牙年輕人工作近8年后才能在獲得一份永久合同。在這之前，他們一直在簽訂臨時合同。這推遲了結(jié)婚和生育；幾乎一半的25至34歲的年輕人現(xiàn)在和父母住在一起。當(dāng)西班牙人最終結(jié)婚時，他們已經(jīng)經(jīng)歷了十年無子女的自由生活。大約五分之一的女性根本沒有孩子，這是生育率總體下降的一個重要原因。對于那些敢于冒險的人來說，女性第一次生育的平均年齡為31歲，是歐洲最高的國家之一，其中還包括意大利和馬耳他。許多人止步于生一個孩子；獨(dú)生子女家庭是如此普遍，以至于保守派報紙《西班牙世界報》設(shè)想了一個“沒有兄弟姐妹”的未來國家。

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The late start to procreation may be a big factor in low overall fertility. At any rate, a paper by Poh Lin Tan of the University of Singapore notes that a raft of economic incentives offered in Singapore to parents has failed to stop the continuing drop in fertility there, to 1.16 in 2018. She says that reducing the age of childbearing is the “l(fā)owest-hanging fruit” of policymaking.

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晚育可能是總體生育率低的一個重要因素。無論如何，新加坡國立大學(xué)的Poh Lin Tan的一篇論文指出，新加坡政府向父母提供大量的經(jīng)濟(jì)激勵措施也未能阻止該國生育率的持續(xù)下降。到2018年生育率降至1.16。她說降低法定生育年齡是政策制定中“最容易摘到的果實(shí)”。

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But that requires economic opportunities, says Dr Adserà. This can take the form of a large number of stable jobs, for example in the public sector, as in the Nordic countries, she says. (Women are generally over-represented in the public sector.) Or it can take the form of dynamic job markets, where a job lost is reasonably likely to be replaced, perhaps by a better one—as in America, Britain or Australia, which boast higher fertility than southern Europe.

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但是這需要經(jīng)濟(jì)層面的機(jī)會，阿德斯拉博士說。她表示，就像在北歐國家一樣，具體可以表現(xiàn)為大量穩(wěn)定的工作，比如在政府公共部門。(婦女在政府公共部門的人數(shù)通常過多。)或者可以采取動態(tài)就業(yè)市場的形式，失去的工作很可能會被更好的工作所替代——就像美國、英國或澳大利亞所做的那樣，這些國家自詡擁有比南歐更高的生育率。

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Fix, don’ t bribe

解決問題，不要補(bǔ)貼

But what seems clear is that simple baby bribes—whether they come as one-time bonuses, monthly giveaways or tax credits— are not enough. More generally, says Frank Furedi of MCC, a Hungarian-government-funded think-tank, “pro-natalist policies simply don’t work.” The evidence from Poland seems similar; the government there has run a generous monthly child benefit since 2016, but it has not seen an uptick in babies born. The best countries can do is make combining work and family less difficult. As Georgia Meloni’s government considers new measures for Italy, the political temptation will be to announce “pro-family” policies. But what young couples really want is job opportunities, support and choice. If all are available, more of them may use that choice to have more babies.

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但似乎很清楚的是，簡單的生育補(bǔ)貼——無論是一次性獎金、每月的贈品還是稅收抵免——都是不夠的。匈牙利政府資助的智庫MCC的Frank Furedi說，更普遍的情況是，“支持生育的政策根本不起作用?！辈ㄌm的現(xiàn)狀似乎應(yīng)證了這一說法；自2016年以來，那里的政府每月都有慷慨的兒童福利，但新生兒數(shù)量并沒有增加。各國政府所能做的最好的事情就是讓工作和家庭的平衡變得不那么困難。隨著焦?fàn)柤獘I·梅洛尼政府考慮對意大利采取新措施，宣布“支持家庭”的政策對她來說是一種政治誘惑。但年輕夫婦真正想要的是工作機(jī)會、支持和選擇權(quán)。如果這一切都能做到，可能會有更多的人會選擇生更多的孩子。