I numeri del declino demografico italiano

Sul Wall Street Journal di ieri, martedì 7 settembre, Giulio Meotti, giornalista del quotidiano italiano il Foglio, passa in rassegna alcuni utili dati sulle tendenze demografiche in Italia:

[...] The number of births has been outpaced by the number of deaths every year since 1994. This Catholic country that has always been stereotyped as the land of big, close-knit families, has attained one of the world's lowest levels of fertility. In the 1960s, the overall fertility rate was two children per couple. We are now at what demographers call "lowest-low" fertility: 1.3 births per woman. James Vaupel, director of the Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research in Germany, estimates that if the current trend continues, Italy's population could drop to 10 million by the end of this century, one-sixth of today's population. [...] Italy is not alone in committing demographic suicide. There is not a single country in Europe where people are having enough children to replace themselves. But Italy is the first country in the world to experience what is known as "the crossing-over", where the number of people who are over 60 exceeds the number of those who are under 20.