Migration gains but not fertility change. An impact evaluation of a municipal family policy in Trentino via Synthetic Difference-in-Differences

This study started from the assumption that family policies, although primarily implemented to improve the well-being of family members in a given territory, can exercise indirect effects on certain demographic outcomes, such as fertility rates and population movements. This led us to ask whether family policies adopted at the local level could, because of these effects, be a tool for combating the depopulation affecting small municipalities in rural areas.To answer this question, we focused on Trentino (a mountainous province located in northeastern Italy) and, more specifically, on a family policy, i.e., Family in Trentino, that has been implemented in several municipalities of this province for several years now.Using municipality-level administrative data and the Synthetic Difference-in-Differences method, we found that this policy had a significant impact on the net migration rate of those municipalities that adopted it but was unable to influence their fertility rate.Our analysis of the Trentino case, therefore, shows that only one of the two causal mechanisms that can activate a family policy appears to be effective in counteracting depopulation trends. This does not mean that the municipalities in Trentino that have adopted the policy under examination are more effective at countering depopulation trends than municipalities providing other types of public services. If anything, it means that by controlling the provision of these other services, the municipalities that implemented Family in Trentino would have had a worse net migration rate if they had not implemented this policy.