schooling do not participate in the labour market, compared with 8 per cent for men. nor is this lesser presence of women accompanied by a greater propensity to have children : the fertility rate in italy, together with spain and greece, is significantly below the european average. there is a broad consensus that part - time employment opportunities and adequate childcare structures are effective instruments to encourage women to enter and remain in the labour market. italy is on a par with the most advanced countries in its availability of nursery schools and kindergartens for children between three and six years old, but there is an acute shortage of day nurseries, especially in the south and islands. the estimates available indicate that increasing the number of places in day nurseries could have a positive effect both on women ’ s decision to work and on their decision to have children. in the absence of public and private structures for very young children, home care provided by relatives or babysitters becomes essential. an indirect sign of the importance of this form of assistance is given by the positive correlation between the percentage of immigrants in the population at province level and the propensity of better - educated women aged 25 to 45 with pre - school children to participate in the labour market, particularly in the part - time segment. in general, improving the design of policies in support of dependent family members would have the twofold effect of raising female labour force participation and assisting the choice to have children. see a. brandolini, p. cipollone and e. viviano, “ does the ilo definition capture all unemployment? ”, banca d ’ italia, temi di discussione, no. 529, 2004 ; now in journal of the european economic association, 2006, vol. 4, pp. 153 - 79. the share of self - employment gagliani saw women ’ s low labour force participation as a symptom of italy ’ s development delay. he identified a second aspect of this lag in what he called the “ considerable anomaly ” of the italian case : the large share of self - employed workers in nonfarm employment. according to the labour force survey, in 2005 self - employment accounted for 27 per cent of total employment, against an eu average of 15 per cent ( figure 5 ). among european countries, only greece had a higher percentage. what are the causes of this disparity? self - employment is a composite phenomenon. it includes highincome entrepreneurial activities and professions, but also

of stable growth. the most recent developments – the faster - than - expected growth of output, the expansion of exports in the last year – are promising signs for the future but not yet decisive. unquestionably, this is the main factor slowing the italian economy, but it is not the only one. there are two other elements to consider : the labour force participation rate and the demographic structure. in the ten years 1997 - 2006 per capita gdp grew by 1 per cent per year. labour productivity gains accounted for 0. 5 percentage points of this annual growth and another 0. 8 points came from the improvement in the employment rate, i. e. the ratio of the number of people in work to the population aged 15 to 64, while the rise in the demographic dependency rate – the ratio of those under 15 or over 64 to the working - age population – subtracted 0. 3 percentage points per year from the growth in output. the repercussions of population ageing have already begun to be felt in our labour market. deaths have outnumbered births in every year since 1993 except for 2004. the years ahead will see a further sharp contraction in the working - age population, which only immigration flows much larger than those now projected would be able to offset. according to istat ’ s latest demographic projections, which assume a net migratory inflow of some 150, 000 per year, the italian population will fall to 56 million in 2050 and only just over half will be of working age. if the labour force participation rates by sex and age group remained unchanged, the labour force would shrink by about 25 per cent compared with today, that is, by more than 6 million people, with an average negative impact on per capita gdp growth of about 0. 5 percentage points per year for the next forty years. the need not only to sustain the growth of productivity but also to raise the employment rate is evident. employment in italy has increased significantly since the second half of the 1990s, considerably more than could be expected on the basis of the slow growth of output. between 1996 and 2006 the total number of full - time equivalent workers rose by nearly 10 per cent, or by 2. 2 million. an essential boost to employment came from immigrants, who now account for more than 5 per cent of the employed resident population. despite the recent progress, however, italy ’ s employment rate is still one of the lowest in the advanced world. in 2005 it stood at 57. 6 per cent, against an