Carlo Cottarelli: “Those who have children should retire earlier”

First the president of Istat Gian Carlo Blanciardo he raised the alarm: «In 2021 for the first time we will close with less than 400 thousand births. To give an element of comparison, in 1964 we had over one million births ». Probably this drop in births is due to the lockdown: “Fear and uncertainty of the unknown as it happened after Chernobyl”. Carlo Cottarelli, former commissioner for the revision of public spending and today director of the Observatory on Italian public accounts of the Catholic University of Milan, then published a tweet reiterating an idea he has been talking about for years to combat the demographic crisis: “With few children there will be fewer workers producing what is needed for the elderly, forcing them to delay retirement.

We would need a reward mechanism: those who have children retire earlier ».

A tweet that sparked criticisms that do not seem to subside: “So I, who don’t have children, want a reward because I pollute less than someone who has children, less polluting diapers, etc …”, “And if his children go to work abroad or are unemployed, we take away their pension rights anticipated? »,« And I am single? No family allowances, no soft loan, do I pay the same taxes and retire later? “

According to Istat, those born in Italy in 2021 will drop below 400K. With fewer children there will be fewer workers to produce what is needed for the elderly, forcing them to delay retirement. We need a reward mechanism: those who have children retire earlier

— Carlo Cottarelli (@CottarelliCPI) October 4, 2021

But Carlo Cottarelli, to that avalanche of criticisms, replies calmly: “It’s something I said years ago and I also wrote it in my book The seven deadly sins of the Italian economy, released in March 2018. Every now and then I retweet it to remind people, but now it has attracted more attention simply because we are coming out of 100 ”.

So how would this mechanism work?
“Obviously it is a provocation, because there is no detail on how to do this, but it is important to make it clear that behind the problem of pensions is the fact that people no longer have children. If this continues, in 30-40 years, it becomes an even more serious problem. It goes without saying that in your working life you have paid your contributions if you don’t have children… ».

But what could the state do to facilitate this process?
«In the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR) resources have already been foreseen for kindergartens and the single allowance and perhaps even more needs to be done, increase the deficit today for a benefit that will arrive tomorrow. We must use everything we have available. Of course, immigration could help, but we know that it creates many social tensions ”.

However, they accused her of little sensitivity towards those who have no children …
“In life there are many injustices, we will have to fix those too, but the fact remains that if you don’t have children the problem will become more and more serious and we will all pay for it. This year the estimate is 400 thousand new born, in 1954, when I was born, there were over 900 thousand. “And yet he moves” Galileo said to the Inquisition court at the end of his abjuration of heliocentrism: then people were very angry with him, but it seems to me that he was not wrong ».