Vitality and malaise in demography: outlook and strategies for the future

"When dealing with age structures...the question could be posed...whether in the age structure such pronounced 'distortions' already exist as to make a major contribution to plotting the course of demography and then, as a more or less inevitable consequence, to shaping the social and economic context. In other words, whether conditions of 'demographic malaise' exist linked, on the one hand, to an extraordinarily young age structure and a consequent 'excess' population growth...and, on the other, to an extraordinarily old age structure and a subsequent 'excess' population decline.... This study proposes to focus particularly on this second instance, which pertains to contemporary western populations or sub-populations, [using the example of Italy]."