The Fading Future Of Italy's Young

Growing up, Italian teenagers learn the tale of Giotto and the fly. As a young apprentice in 13th century Florence, the aspiring painter sketched a fly on the nose of a portrait his master-teacher Cimabue was finishing. So lifelike was the insect that when the elder painter returned to the studio, he repeatedly tried to swat it off the canvas. Realizing he'd been fooled by the bravura talent of his pupil, Cimabue told him: "You have surpassed your teacher." Thus encouraged by his master, Giotto went on to revolutionize Western painting, and posterity regards him as the man who launched the Italian Renaissance.

Fast-forward to Italy 2006, and the image of the precocious apprentice has been replaced by a humbler figure: the underemployed 30-something despondent about the present, let alone the future. Today's Italy is defined by stories like that of Vincenza Lasala. At 32, four years after graduating with honors in mechanical engineering, she is living with her parents in the same house where she grew up. She has sent more than 200 résumés to large corporations and small companies around the country, but all she has managed to secure are a handful of part-time stints, unpaid internships and training programs. From her home in the sleepy southern town of Avellino, near Naples, a frustrated Lasala speaks for much of Italy's younger generation: "Without a job, my parents are basically still in charge of my life. After all my studying, I don't see the fruits of my effort. Right now, I can't even envision my future."

Italy has long been the proverbial Old Country, a destination for culture-hungry travelers and a source of nostalgia for its millions of emigrants around the world. To its 58 million citizens, it is that rare land that still honors tradition and respects the wisdom of its elders. The average Italian life span is among the longest in the world, akin to the Swedes and Japanese, living proof that something remains fundamentally sweet about the place. You can taste it in the local customs and family recipes handed down through generations, or see it when a teen tucks away his cell phone to take grandma for a stroll, or relish it in the survival of the village café amid a world of Starbucks. But all the doting on the past is also stifling the present, and may portend a bitter future.

Italy is now on course to become quite literally the oldest of countries. Beset by economic and social stagnation that makes it among the most ossified slices of Old Europe, it is stuck with a stubbornly low birth-rate that means Italians are not even replacing themselves. In a more fundamental way, the nation has not figured out how to make use of the energy and ingenuity of its young. Faced with bleak job prospects and a lack of young leaders to look to, Italians in their 20s and 30s risk falling into a nationwide generational rut. Many are afflicted with a pervading sense of hopelessness and malaise that contrasts with the youth-driven vigor boosting states like Sweden or Slovenia.

A principal source of their despair is the scant prospect for change from the top. As the country heads to the polls on April 9-10 for the first national elections in five years, the old party machines cling to power, and the voters are left with a lukewarm popularity contest between old-timers: two-time Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, 69, vs. former European Commission President (and former Prime Minister) Romano Prodi, 66. This means that, regardless of who wins, the country's youth will remain locked out of the power structures — not just of government but most of the institutions that define a nation's way of life.

Though absent from the candidates' slogans, Italy's need to rejuvenate itself ought to be the nation's No. 1 priority. Better educated and more connected with the outside world, young Italians are ready to step into full-fledged adulthood and reshape their country's future. But far too few have had the chance. The young, of course, have to push for power, and some admit they don't push hard enough. Still, even the most determined shoves are rarely able to nudge open the doors to Italy's exclusive and aging ruling club. During the six-week election campaign, Time traveled the length of the peninsula talking to those under 40, to explore the troubled landscape of their lives, and search for the seeds of tomorrow's Renaissance.

At the core of the dilemma lies Italy's aging but long-lived population. For the past generation, the birthrate has remained at or near the bottom of world rankings, stuck last year at 1.3 children per woman (compared to 2.7 in the mid-1960s). That has fundamentally tilted the economy: in the past 10 years, the ratio of retired to working Italians has jumped from 23% to 28% — the second highest in the world — clipping productivity and jeopardizing the solvency of the pension system. Without an unexpected surge in births, that ratio is expected to double by 2040.

Italy is hardly the only industrialized nation to face a demographic time bomb. But elsewhere in Western Europe, the declining birthrate tends to be caused by eager young people striking out on their own who are too focused on satisfying immediate ambitions to take on the burden of rearing children. In Italy, says Francesco Billari, 35, a demographer at Milan's Bocconi University, the empty cradles are the fruit of exactly the opposite phenomenon: an adolescence prolonged well into the 30s.

Nowadays, the average Italian man is 33 when his first child is born, making Italian men the oldest first-time fathers in Europe. There are plenty of reasons: drawn-out university studies, inadequate child care and, frankly, not enough young adults willing to grow up. "Italians take a long time to assume responsibilities," Billari explains. "Everything," from moving out of the parental home to marrying and having kids, "starts late."