Demographic change and school infrastructure: enrollments and school closures in Italy and Estonia

Population aging is reshaping the need for social infrastructure in high-income countries, but the long-term effects on school systems are still underexplored. This lecture will provide evidence from two different contexts: Italy, one of the world's most rapidly aging societies, and Estonia, which has also faced a long period of low fertility.

The study analyzes registry data and population projections until 2100 to predict future school demand. The findings project a decline in both student numbers and the number of schools in both countries. This raises important policy questions on how to ensure fair access to education, particularly in rural areas that are most at risk of losing their local schools.

Risto Conte Keivabu is a postdoc in the Laboratory of Digital and Computational Demography of Emilio Zagheni at the Max Planck Institute of Demographic Research in Rostock (Germany). His research interests are in climate change, socio-demographic inequalities, health, population change, social infrastructures and demography. More precisely, in his work he tries to understand how climate change, environmental exposures and population dynamics affect health and social infrastructures.

Abstract