The Subnational Fertility Transition in Italy (1871-1971): A Century of Fundamental Change

Riccardo Omenti, Nicola Barban and Michail Raftakis

No 8r3xg_v1, SocArXiv from Center for Open Science

Abstract: The Italian fertility transition has drawn sustained interest from historical demographers, thanks to rich archival sources, especially parish records, and a well-established scholarly tradition. Yet no study has offered a comprehensive account of how the transition unfolded subnationally across the second half of the nineteenth and first half of the twentieth centuries. Drawing on extensive yet underutilised data from the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT), we present annual total fertility rate (TFR) estimates for all Italian provinces covering the historical period 1871–1971, using an established Bayesian modelling framework. Combining convergence analysis with measures of relative dispersion and variability, we examine whether provincial fertility differences widened or narrowed over the transition. We further investigate urban-rural fertility trajectories within Italy’s nine most populous provinces. The results reveal a geographically uneven transition: northern and central provinces led the fertility decline, while southern provinces lagged behind, resulting in divergence across provinces. Nonetheless, urban–rural differences narrowed substantially in northern and central provinces and remained negligible in southern provinces. These findings underscore the spatial heterogeneity of Italy’s fertility transition, displaying the co-existence of increasing provincial disparities with diminishing urban-rural differences in the areas leading the fertility decline.

Date: 2026-10-12
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:osf:socarx:8r3xg_v1

DOI: 10.31235/osf.io/8r3xg_v1

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