Territorial dispersion and convergence in infant mortality and its components: Italy 1950- 2019

The steep decline in infant mortality is undoubtedly one of the most significant changes Italy and Europe have experienced during the last centuries. This paper focuses on the temporal and spatial evolution of survival in the first year of life, using Italian provincial data from 1950 to 2019. After World War II to the present, the decline of infant mortality risks was a process that took place with different intensities and speeds among regions and provinces. Nonetheless, the convergence process was slow even continuously in action. This work has three main objectives. First, the timing and distribution over time and by province of the drop of mortality in the first year of life are pictured. Second, we analyse the convergence process at the territorial level together with the persistence and potential concentration of inequality in survival by means of classical measures of dispersion. Third, we control the evolution of neonatal and post-neonatal mortality with a sub-national approach. To achieve these objectives, we make use of a provincial-level database that has so far been little used, and which covers 70 years, from 1950 to 2019. After providing theoretical explanations about the emergence and the persistence of geographical inequalities in neonatal, post-neonatal and infant mortality, we will show how the geographical inequality follows the North-South gradient, and whether the process of convergence comes to an end for both the component of infant survival.