The Novae Terrae Foundation and the Catholic University of Milan present the first report about family from a worldwide perspective, through the Independent Global Index on Family (IGIF).

Such project has two main goals:

• to analyse the characteristics of family, with a specific focus on internal and external relationships, and
• to understand if and how it possible to “start a family” in different geographical and cultural contexts.

In the country ranking, report finds Denmark, New Zealand, Sweden and Norway at the top, followed by Israel, Germany, Switzerland, Lithuania, Russia, Iceland, Belgium and Estonia with good Index scores. Italy is 39°, followed only by Serbia, Poland, Czech Republic, Slovakia, Peru, Croatia and Macedonia.

The articulation of sub-indexes highlights different situations: there are countries where, despite the high levels of economic and/or contextual resources for care tasks, the structural dimension in terms of children and marriage remains low: this is the case of Denmark, New Zealand, Sweden and Germany, where we find situations that might be called “I could, but I don’t want to”; other countries where both the structure, in terms of stable marriage and numbers of children, and the resources (financial and contextual) are low: this is the case of Italy, Greece, Mexico, Romania, Serbia, Poland, Slovakia, Croatia and Macedonia, a sort of “I would, but I can’t”.

Read full report and indicators here.