Infant mortality: Male 3.3/1,000 Female 3.1/1,000 All 3.3/1,000

 

Natural increase: 0.23%

 

Crude birth rate: 8.7/1,000

 

 

 

 

            Italy has the 5^th highest life expectancy, and no one really knows why Italy is so high on the list. There are many reasons why, however none of the reasons are definitely the reason, the reasons are diet and health care. The Italians diet is called the Mediterranean diet, many scientist believe that this diet helps them live longer because they eat lots of olive oil, fruits vegetables and meat with no fat, this is a backed up fact because the UK’s life expectancy is lower then Italy’s. The next reason is they have really good health care, their health care is ranked 10^th in health cares in the world (the US is 37^th). Most all hospitals in Italy are ready for any and all emergencies and unlike hospitals in America are never crowded due to the plentiful amount of them. 

 

Gender Empowerment Measure: 0.693

 

 

            Italian women attend high school more successfully than Italian men, and also more frequently. In 1950 only 7 percent of girls between the ages of fourteen and seventeen went to school, while 12 percent of boys did. In 1998-99 84 percent of the girls and 81 percent of the boys attended high schools. At university levels women outnumbered men by the late 1990s. The increased level of education of Italian women helps to explain the greater presence of women in the labor market, however, Italian women are still well below the levels of other European and American countries (in 1999, 35.3% of Italian women aged fifteen and older were employed outside the home).

Women's traditional role of wife and mother is no longer appealing, and young housewives perceive their situation more as a necessity, than as a choice. Working mothers declare themselves more satisfied than housewives and mothers, although they are weighed down by an enormous amount of work when one adds the work in the house to the work outside: 35 percent of young working mothers spend more than seventy hours working per week, and more than half, including those who work more than seventy, work more than sixty hours per week.