elderly, jobless women, effects and risks of the demographic crisis – Corriere.it

The beauty of a newsletter is that you can keep the kitchen open: a bit like in certain restaurants where the cooks stir the pans in front of the customers. So here are the ingredients. I listened to a podcast by Lant Pritchett, an American economist with a strong idea: instead of accelerating towards the automation of any function through technologies that reduce the demand for labor – Pritchett argues – we should accepting more immigrants for jobs that adults in rich countries no longer want to do. His words buzzed in my head until the day I asked Istat for estimates on the number of elderly people in Italy in the next few years.

Demographic forecasts

Because many predictions are like feathers in the wind, you know. But not those on demography which, on the contrary, remain mostly engraved in stone. Populations are like glaciers that move slowly but surely and measurably in future movements. Therefore, a few elaborations from Istat data are enough to predict the number of people over 80 in Italy today and in the future. They will be:
– 4 million in 2023
– 4.26 million in 2028
– 4.75 million in 2033
– 5.10 million in 2038
– 5.67 million in 2043
– 6.84 million in 2050
In other words, in fifteen years there will be 1.1 million more people of very advanced age and in twenty years there will be 1.6 million more. The number of over-80s in Italy is set to grow by around 18% in the next ten years and by 40% in the next twenty, to then accelerate further. At the same time, the demographic structure will ensure that in the country, on the basis of today’s balance and laws, the population of working age will reduce by one million heads every three years.

Italy last in Europe for female employment

Hence two of the many possible questions:
– Who will take care of these elderly people in the future?
– What other activities will those who spend their time caring for the elderly have to give up?
How relevant these questions are is shown, by extension, by the attempt that Italy is making dthe open 264,000 new places between nursery schools and kindergartens thanks to three billion euros from the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (Pnrr). Behind the project is the ambition to free more mothers from day care tasks for their children, so that they can work. And not just a theme of (late, sacrosanct) equity. We are also playing a game for the country’s economic and financial sustainability. In fact, Italy is last in Europe for female employment. If women were integrated into the world of work in a proportion equal to the European average, then Italy would have 2.2 million more active female workers (compared to the current 9.6). For now, in the last five years, the increase has been ten times smaller than what the country would need to get back to normal. But, paradoxically, this is precisely an untapped resource to cling to: if female employment increased towards the average of a normal European country, then we would have a better chance of offsetting the natural decline of the active population and thus generating growth rates ( 1.5% on average per year) that we desperately need to make the Italian debt sustainable.

Potential inactive female workers

In other words, getting many more women into work is the most direct way to compensate for the mass outflow into retirement of an aging population. Today the potential reserve of female labor not involved in the official economy of 8.9 million of heads: it should not be impossible to integrate 2.2 million of them into the production system in the coming years. We owe it to them. And we owe it to their children, because the growth needed to avoid succumbing to the weight of the public debt can come from there. So opening 265,000 new places for pre-school children doesn’t just reflect an ambition to do something right or politically correct. precisely a bet on the economic and social stability of the country.

Care of children and the elderly

Now let’s imagine that this bet is won, relieving about two hundred thousand parents – unfortunately mostly women, given the cultural delays on the role of us males – from the obligation to care for their children. And let’s go back to the projections on the very elderly: while we create 265,000 places in nursery schools and kindergartens, people over 80 will be increasing by as much in just five years (in fact, the horizon of the Pnrr), then three times as much in ten years and more than six times as much in twenty years. Any social progress in terms of caring for the youngest risks being more than nullified by the obligations to care for the elderly. At this point I turned to two specialists: Giovanni Fosti, professor of Welfare and Social Innovation at the Sda Bocconi School of Management as well as, until a few weeks ago, president of the Cariplo Foundation; and Antonio Sebastiano, director of the Rsa Observatory of the Liuc Business School of Castellanza. Fosti showed me a recent work done together with Elisabetta Notarnicola and Eleonora Perobelli on elderly care personnel; Sebastiano has made available to me his estimates for the next few years.

Caregiver work in the future

What comes out of it?
Sebastiano estimates that there are 1.14 million people active in Italy today (about 60% of whom are irregular, in the underground economy). There are about 81 people involved in the care of the dependent for every thousand inhabitants of the country over 65 years of age. But since this elderly population (over 65) will grow in the next twenty years from fourteen to almost nineteen million people, about 400,000 more carers will be needed just to maintain the current level of care and protection of the most fragile. But are these people willing and able to do such a difficult job? And most importantly, is the current level of care sufficient? Fosti and colleagues show that the coverage of the needs of the dependent population is already very low today. From residences for the elderly aged 75 or over, just 9% of the country’s needs are insured (but 1% in Campania, 2% in Sicily); and even in domestic assistance he manages to cover just over a fifth of what would be needed. In essence: the demand for manpower to assist the elderly in Italy is about to explode, but already today the supply to guarantee these delicate tasks is far lower than the needs. Antonio Sebastiano and Roberto Pigni, also from Liuc, add that even in families there will be fewer people able to take care of elderly relatives: in fact, couples without children or with only one child and families with only one parent are increasing.

social balance

Since Italy is not Japan, I don’t think automation will help us. The better off will manage, somehow. Otherwise the problem will fall back on the women in every family again, I fear, if nothing is done about it. Still once upon a time a vital part of society will find itself stuck at home, cut off from productive life and economic independence. To everyone’s detriment. I think Lant Pritchett was right: we need a desired, governed, trained, integrated immigration. And it’s needed now. It’s not a question of being right or left, but of trying to preserve social balance, sustainability and a minimum of equity in the country. Or we prefer a public debate that lives only on emotion, suffering from attention deficit disorder, unable to worry about anything other than the latest emergency and then forget it after a few days. We just have to choose what kind of country we want to live in: today and in the coming years.

This article was originally published in the newsletter Whatever it Takes edited by Federico Fubini (do not hesitate to write me: comments or questions, disputes and proposals). To register, click on this link.

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