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Italy's Aging Crisis and the Care Economy Squeeze
Description
In this episode of The Demographics Podcast, Lucas and Luna unpack Italy's demographic bind: a birth rate below 1.2 and a population where nearly one in four people is over 65. They focus on the economic ripple effects through the care economy — from unpaid family labor to the rising cost of elder care facilities. With specific data from Italy's National Institute of Statistics and a comparison to Japan's earlier trajectory, they explore how a shrinking workforce and growing dependency ratio are reshaping public finances and private markets. The conversation also touches on policy experiments like the 'baby bonus' and the role of immigration. Listeners come away understanding why Italy's situation is less a crisis of culture than a structural economic puzzle with no easy fixes.