The pandemic is holding back births: only 5.1 per 1000 inhabitants. On a national level, never so few cradles since the unification of Italy
SASSARI. 2020 with the outbreak of the pandemic left more evident demographic consequences in areas, such as Sardinia, which were already dealing with serious economic and social problems. The island is the region with the worst birth rate, 5.1 births per 1000 inhabitants, and is at the bottom of a ranking that sees the autonomous province of Bolzano first with 9.6 per 1000. Istat notes this in the report « The demographic dynamics during the covid-19 pandemic – year 2020 ».
The geography of births shows a generalized decline, more pronounced in the North-West (-4.6%) and in the South (-4.0%), with a new record of few births (404,104). National data on birth rates are intertwined with those of deaths, which in 2020 totaled 746,146, the highest number ever recorded since the second postwar period, with an increase compared to the 2015-2019 average of over 100 thousand units (+15.6 %): the negative natural dynamic that characterizes Italy worsens, for which the natural balance (the difference between births and deaths) in 2020 reaches -342 thousand units, a value lower in the last 160 years only than the record of 1918 (- 648,000), when the “Spanish” epidemic caused almost half of the 1.3 million deaths that year.
Another data concerns the increase in deaths in the period October-December 2020, when the central south was also heavily affected by the pandemic waves. Although the highest price in terms of excess mortality is paid once again by the North (+ 40.0%), it also becomes consistent in the Central (+ 24.2%) and Southern regions (+ 26.1%). , relatively saved during the first phase. Well, among the regions of the whole central south, Sardinia is the one that paid the highest price, with + 34.9% of deaths, ahead of Puglia + 30.5% compared to the average of the years 2015-2019. The island is second only to Puglia in the period from June to September. The Istat data confirms and even worsens that published a few days ago by the Annual Report on the birth event in Italy (2018 data), coming from the information flow of the Childbirth Assistance Certificate (CeDAP). The birth rate ranged from 5.7 births per thousand women of childbearing age in Sardinia to 10 in the Autonomous Province of Trento, compared to a national average of 7.3. Fertility maintains the decreasing trend of previous years: in 2018 the average number of children per woman dropped to 1.32 (compared to 1.46 in 2010). The least prolific regions are Sardinia, Basilicata and Molise.
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