Italian here. I feel like the core issues are probably on point, with the details differing from country to country. For us, our economy has been quite bad for decades now. Work is scarce, poorly paid, often within stultified companies ruled by an idiotic behind the times managerial class (one thing Italy shares with Japan: being a gerontocracy). People don’t achieve economic stability until well in their thirties, if ever. Some jobs, like teacher, require absurd humiliation congas (I know of people who kept being substitutes and temps, constantly travelling for each role, well into their fifties, while climbing up the Byzantine public scoreboard to a fixed job). It’s just not particularly surprising that fertility craters. Mostly I would say Italians in Italy end up working very hard to achieve very little which is simultaneously tiring and demotivating.
Italian here. I feel like the core issues are probably on point, with the details differing from country to country. For us, our economy has been quite bad for decades now. Work is scarce, poorly paid, often within stultified companies ruled by an idiotic behind the times managerial class (one thing Italy shares with Japan: being a gerontocracy). People don’t achieve economic stability until well in their thirties, if ever. Some jobs, like teacher, require absurd humiliation congas (I know of people who kept being substitutes and temps, constantly travelling for each role, well into their fifties, while climbing up the Byzantine public scoreboard to a fixed job). It’s just not particularly surprising that fertility craters. Mostly I would say Italians in Italy end up working very hard to achieve very little which is simultaneously tiring and demotivating.