[Infant and early childhood mortality in Italy from the eighteenth to the twentieth century: long-term tendencies and regional differences].

From the beginning of national unification (1861) onwards, the process of the decline in infant mortality has been well-known and several explanatory hypotheses have been offered about the time differences in the decline on different territories. Using a still fragmentary and heterogeneous documentary data basis, this article has attempted to outline the evolution of the mortality of children as from the eighteenth century, stressing the permanence of territorial particularities in the long run. Before the beginning of the irreversible decline (as from the second half of the nineteenth century), the determining factors of the territorial differences seem to depend more on socio-cultural factors and on the surrounding atmosphere than on the standards of living of the populations.