Local and Global Analysis of Fertility Rate in Italy

Following the rapid and intense decrease after the “babyboom”, today Italy is one of the nations with the lowest fertility rate, In recent time the Total Fertility Rate (TFR) was equal to 1.35, very close to the so-called “lowest low fertility” threshold. These low values of fertility not only impact on the population’s age structure, but also on social welfare systems since the increasing share of elderly needs more financial aid while the support from the working age population decreases. But is this decline at the national level? Do some determinants of the TFR act more in a specific territory? As we know the role of the determinates on fertility is largely unexplored at the territorial micro-level in Italy. So in this paper, through the use of a Semi-parametric Geographically Weighted Regression (S-GWR) model, we try to investigate the impact of the socio-economic determinates on the provincial TFR in Italy.