ANALYSIS ACCORDING TO PERIOD AND GENERATION

During the recent past, Italy has become one of the countries in Europe with the lowest fertility. Total period fertility has fallen to 1.3 births per woman. The value of longitudinal analysis for an understanding of this trend has led the Italian Statistical Office (ISTAT) to reconstitute the fertility history of birth cohorts for women born after 1920. There appear to he sharp differences between Northern, Central and Southern Italy, as well as significant variations between the provinces of each of these regions. Thus, the baby boom of the 1960s, in which Italy participated together with other Western European countries, did not occur evenly throughout the country, and the distribution of births by birth order differed sharply between the North and the South. This division of the country continues, despite apparent earlier signs towards a convergence.