Assessing the Impact of National and Regional Financial Incentives for Childbearing in a Lowest-Low Fertility Setting

Gianpiero Dalla Zuanna, University of Padua
Loghi Marzia, Instituto Nazionale di Statistica (ISTAT)

Italy has been, together with Spain, the first country that has reached the threshold of so-called “lowest-low” fertility (Kohler et al., 2003), below 1.3 children per woman, during the early 1990s. Within Italy, some regions have even lower fertility levels, as a high heterogeneity exists between regions. In 2003, regional-level TFR data indicated that Friuli-Venezia Giulia, a Region endowed with special autonomy levels in the North-East, had a TFR of 1.16 (against the national level having reached 1.29). In this paper we present an assessment of policies that help families with children at two levels (national level and regional level, focusing on Friuli-Venezia Giulia for the latter).