It has been almost three years since President Sergio Mattarella warned that “the very existence of our country” was at risk due to declining birth rates, adding that “everything must be done to counter this phenomenon.” Official figures reveal that these words did little to spur Italians to action, with fewer than 400,000 babies being born in Italy last year. At just 393,000, the number of births in 2022 was the lowest recorded since the country’s unification more than a century-and-a-half ago, in 1861.
With seven newborns and 12 deaths per 1,000 inhabitants, the Istituto Nazionale di Statistica put Italy’s total fertility rate at 1.24. This, being far below the replacement rate of 2.1, places Italy third from the bottom regarding fertility rates across OECD countries, behind only Spain and South Korea.
While falling short of measures implemented in countries such as Hungary, Italian officials have devised schemes with the hope of boosting the country’s birth rate. As the number of births per year has fallen steadily over recent years, administrators—and even, in some cases, businesses—have offered incentives to reverse the trend. Yet in 2020, Italy’s population declined by the equivalent of a city the size of Florence, and little has changed since.
Commenting on the fall of new births in Italy since the 2008 financial crash, demographer Maria Rita Testa told the Financial Times:
Women are just having fewer children … Some of them decide to remain childless. Others postpone the time of starting to build a family and when it comes time, it is too late.
She described the situation as “a demographic crisis,” adding that “we are going to lose a lot of people in the future.”
Prime Minister Georgia Meloni has expressed similar such concerns about her country’s birth rate, and has pledged to do more about it than previous administrations. Commenting on the new data, Family, Natality and Equal Opportunities Minister Eugenia Roccella said:
We started dealing with it from day one and will continue to do so with determination … In addition to the specific actions put in place by my ministry, the birth rate is and will be a guiding criterion of policies in all sectors and of the entire executive.
Any such measures are likely to take some time before they show their worth. But with the situation getting worse, something bold has to be done now because time is not on Italy’s side.
