They immediately jump to "the Mafia causes a decline in literacy" without even considering that the Peasant Fasci might have been responsible for said decline in literacy.
How the hell did this get published?
Dead babies come from accidental or unwanted pregnancies, particularly when combined with drugs and alcohol.
If the underground black market has a strong supply of prostitution (and not just human traffic sob stories, but also prostitution as party time and consenting my-vagina-my-choice power plays, aka: porn without the camera) and the johns are kept in line with strong arm tactics, you get a lot of ladies offering services, and a cross section of pregnancies that represent a poor business decision.
Charting an uptick in dead babies and unattended children running around is a bellweather for women doing whatever, and having whatever done to them, in larger quantities. Really large quantities, over a sustained span of time looks more like big business producing unsavory norms, the kind associated with vice.
In the periphery of legal pornography production there's a quantity of abortions that, in the early 20th century would have cropped up as "infanticide" and "infant mortality" for lack of better terms.
Low literacy rate is a measure of the unwanted pregnancies that lived. Kids that have parents that don't care about them won't bother with compulsory education when they approach ten years old, and dealing with other students starts to become truly unpleasant. Individuals may obtain pragmatic reading skills, but creative writing and reading for fun would decline right along with an uptick in other adversities.
no checking against population density / structure of environment e.g. rural/small town/urban center - would not urban areas produce more poverty or provide more 'cover' for illlicit activities, or conversely more prosperity, etc etc
no cross-checking checking against economic structure - more specifically access to shipping/ports, whatever industry, etc. might exist - all of which could create cover business, access to distribution, etc
connection/lack of connection of those poorer sicilians affected by the mentioned famine, etc to US immigration and increased opportunity for international criminal activity especially as concerns the vast rise of us/italian mafia during prohibition.. maybe all the 'smart people' from the mafia areas simply left for the US to become gangsters, as one exaggerated potential counterpoint..
zero discussion of local / regional political factors w/r/t the italian unification, etc, which was a massive event co-occurring with the early time period related to the being discussed..
zero discussion of socio-philosophical/cultural/religious aspects aside from the singular 'fasci' socialist group.. much mafioso folklore is tied with romanticized notions of protecting ones people, creating war against enemies, etc, and the relation of corrupt members of the vatican to the mafia are not exactly fiction..
assuming a certain progression of trajectory as 'natural' and equally applicable to all areas implicitly, and further that deviations from this 'norm' are attributable to the pre-presumed causes due to correlative effect ..
etc etc etc.