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Despite a delay of 20–25 years, when it comes to cohabitation, Italy has now begun to resemble other Western countries. In addition, the increase in legal separations has accelerated since 1995, although their number still remains far from that observed in countries such as the USA, the UK, and France. Finally, Italy’s fertility decline has come to a halt: the cohort of women born in the early 1970s will likely have the same TFR as those born in the mid-1960s (around 1.55). Moreover, in the Centre–North areas, period TFR rose from 1.1 in 1995 to 1.35 children per woman 10 years later. The territorial diffusion of cohabitation, legal separation, out-of-wedlock births, and fertility recovery overlaps closely with that of the decline in births during the first half of the twentieth century. A similar geographical pattern has been observed for the diffusion of school enrolment, industrialization, secularization, and (during the last 20 years) foreign immigration.Malgré un retard de 20 à 25 ans, en matière de cohabitation l’Italie commence à présent à ressembler aux autres pays occidentaux. De plus, la hausse des séparations légales s’est accélérée depuis 1995, bien que leur niveau demeure encore bien en-deçà de celui qui est observé dans des pays tels que les Etats-Unis d’Amérique, le Royaume-Uni, et la France. Finalement, la fécondité a cessé de baisser en Italie: la cohorte des femmes nées au début des années 1970 aura selon toute vraisemblance le même indice synthétique de fécondité que celle des femmes nées au milieu des années 60 (environ 1,55). De plus, dans les régions du centre-nord, l’indice synthétique de fécondité est passé de 1,1 enfant par femme en 1995 à 1,35 dix ans plus tard. La diffusion territoriale de la cohabitation, des séparations légales, des naissances hors mariage et du rattrapage de la fécondité recouvre de façon étroite celle de la baisse des naissances au cours de la première moitié du vingtième siècle. Le même schéma géographique est observé dans la diffusion de la scolarisation, de l’industrialisation, de la sécularisation et (pendant les 20 dernières années) de l’immigration en provenance de l’étranger

Fertility, nuptiality, reproductive behaviour and living arrangements of never-married women and legally separated women are examined in order to underline differences and similarities to other Western countries. Prospects for the future are also discussed to see whether Italy is in line with the frameworks recently proposed to interpret demographic changes. The results show that delay in the timing of events cannot provide a satisfactory explanation of Italian peculiarities.

IntroductionImproving equity in access to services for the treatment of complications that arise during pregnancy and childbirth, namely Emergency Obstetric Care (EmOC), is fundamental if maternal and neonatal mortality are to be reduced. Consequently, there is a growing need to monitor equity in access to EmOC. The objective of this study was to develop a simple questionnaire to measure equity in utilization of EmOC at Wolisso Hospital, Ethiopia and compare the wealth status of EmOC users with women in the general population.MethodsWomen in the Ethiopia 2005 Demographic and Health Survey (DHS) constituted our reference population. We cross-tabulated DHS wealth variables against wealth quintiles. Five variables that differentiated well across quintiles were selected to create a questionnaire that was administered to women at discharge from the maternity from January to August 2010. This was used to identify inequities in utilization of EmOC by comparison with the reference population.Results760 women were surveyed. An a posteriori comparison of these 2010 data to the 2011 DHS dataset, indicated that women using EmOC were wealthier and more likely to be urban dwellers. On a scale from 0 (poorest) to 15 (wealthiest), 31% of women in the 2011 DHS sample scored less than 1 compared with 0.7% in the study population. 70% of women accessing EmOC belonged to the richest quintile with only 4% belonging to the poorest two quintiles. Transportation costs seem to play an important role.ConclusionsWe found inequity in utilization of EmOC in favour of the wealthiest. Assessing and monitoring equitable utilization of maternity services is feasible using this simple tool.

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