Is Berlusconi Grayer Than He Looks?

By Jeff Israely

Silvio Berlusconi has never been one to act his age. Since being elected Italy's Prime Minister in 2001, he has called a German critic "perfect for the part" of a Nazi prison guard, reminisced after a speech to the U.S. Congress about seeing a Playboy calendar in high school and even held up two fingers behind the head of the Spanish Foreign Minister during a photo op. There's also the plastic surgery and hair replacement the 69-year-old billionaire has undergone to help mask the physical toll of his job--which he may well lose when Italians go to the polls this Sunday, with most voter surveys putting his center-left opponents ahead by 5 points. When he thanked supporters at a campaign stop in Naples last week, he couldn't avoid calling attention to the fact that he is, by any measure, a senior citizen. "A welcome like this knocks 10 years off my age!" he said.

As the longest-serving Prime Minister in postwar Italy, Berlusconi might be tempted to try to score points off his opponent's youth and inexperience--except that his rival, former Prime Minister Romano Prodi, is 66. Whoever wins, Italy will remain the only West European country with a sexagenarian Prime Minister. For Italians the face-off between two candidates born in the 1930s is a discomfiting reminder of the country's geriatric tilt. "It's the same faces saying the same things," says Mariangela Potenza, 24, a university student from Basilicata. "There's nothing that transmits innovation or novelty to the voters, nothing that stimulates me as a young person." Voter turnout, though still well above U.S. standards, has been edging downward in every national election since 1979.

Italy has long been the proverbial Old Country, a source of nostalgia for its millions of emigrants around the world. To its 58 million citizens, it is that rare land that still honors tradition and respects the wisdom of its elders.

But Italy is now on course to become the Oldest Country. Stuck with a stubbornly low birthrate of 1.3 children per woman (compared with 2.7 in the 1960s), its society is ossifying, and the economy faces deep structural strains. The median age since 1995 has risen from 40.2 to 42.5. In the past 10 years, the percentage of retired Italians has jumped from 23% to 28%--the second highest percentage in the world after Japan--meaning that there are fewer than four workers for every retiree. The rapidly aging workforce has clipped productivity and jeopardized the solvency of the pension system.

How did Italy get so gray? Demographers say Italians are witnessing the effects of collectively delayed adolescence. The average Italian man is 33 when his first child is born, which means Italy's are the oldest first-time fathers in Europe and thus tend to have smaller families. "Italians take a long time to assume responsibilities," says Francesco Billari, 35, a demographer at Milan's Bocconi University. As a result, everything from leaving home to marrying and having kids to entering politics starts late--which has also delayed the rise of leaders who might push the forward-leaning reforms the country needs.

Some young Italians are trying to buck the trend. Matteo Renzi, president of the province of Florence, is one of Italy's rare young leaders. He says his contemporaries need to grab power--for the good of the whole country. "I ask to have space [to govern] because I've got new ideas," he says. "And I believe I have these ideas because I'm 30." But he knows he can push only so far. When he met Berlusconi for the first time last year, the Prime Minister questioned Renzi on his politics (he's a liberal) and his wardrobe (brown corduroys). He hasn't switched political sides, but ever since, Renzi confesses, he has been wearing sharp blue suits.

With reporting by Francis X. Rocca/ Milan