The fertility transition in North-East Italy. A micro-analysis using a new source

The transitional decline of fertility in Italy has never been studied using micro-data, with the exception of a few small areas. For the first time, we use individual retrospective fertility data collected for 20% of married women aged 40 or older interviewed in the 1971 census in the Veneto Region (North-East Italy), a “late-comer” area in the context of Western European fertility decline (TFR=5.0 in 1871 and 1921, 2.5 in 1951). In order to consider broad explanations of fertility decline, we combine individual retrospective data with other information available at two territorial levels (65 districts or large cities and 582 municipalities), using a three-level clustered regression model (district, municipality, woman). We find that: (1) even if the (few) university-educated women born in the last decades of the 19th century already had a TFR around two, this value is not seen among women with low levels of education until those born fifty years later; (2) the link between fertility and secularization strengthens cohort after cohort, whereas the connections between fertility and industrialization and fertility and urbanization weaken.