Fewer than 400,000 babies were born in Italy last year, the lowest since the 1861 unification of the country, highlighting worsening demographic dynamics in an economy beset by high levels of public debt.
Just 393,000 babies were born in Italy in 2022, the national statistics agency Istat said on Friday, down about 1.8 per cent from the 400,249 born in 2021.
The decline to the lowest level since records began came despite the introduction of a financial incentive scheme aimed at encouraging more women to have children.
The scheme, crafted by former prime minister Mario Draghi’s government in 2021, provides families with monthly financial allowances ranging from €50 to €175 for every newborn child. Those payments continue until the child is either economically independent or reaches 21.
The precise amount paid out by the scheme, which began on March 1 last year, is dependent on the family’s income, but even wealthy families are entitled to the payment.
New births in Italy have been dropping steadily since the 2008 financial crisis, triggering fears that a shrinking and rapidly ageing population will put a further strain on the state’s finances. Italy now has 22,000 centenarians — people aged 100 and above — around three times more than two decades ago.
“Women are just having fewer children,” said Maria Rita Testa, a demographer at Rome’s Luiss University. “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.”
Italy is not alone among advanced economies in seeing fertility rates decline to historically low levels.
World Bank figures show that in 2020 the average number of children per woman was below 2 in all advanced economies with the exception of Israel. At 1.24 for every woman, Italy has the third lowest fertility rate in the OECD, behind Spain and South Korea, which has just 0.8 children for every woman.
Istat has forecast that Italy’s population, now just under 59mn, will drop to just 48mn by 2070, putting intense pressure on everything from the funding of pensions to a healthcare system already struggling with a shortage of doctors. At 135 per cent, Italy has one of the highest debt-to-GDP levels in Europe, according to figures from Eurostat, the European Commission’s statistics bureau.
“It’s a demographic crisis — we are going to lose a lot of people in the future,” Testa said, adding that the forecast assumed a recovery in fertility rates to 1.5 children per woman. “It’s a pretty rapid change.”
If the fertility rate failed to rebound and instead stayed at current low rates, the decline in the population size would be even more drastic, she warned.
Prime minister Giorgia Meloni’s government has repeatedly expressed concern about the low number of births in Italy, and the implications for the country’s prospects.
Economists believe encouraging higher fertility levels will require more than cash payments, arguing that Italy’s notoriously insufficient childcare services must also be strengthened, especially for children too young to go to school.
At present, Italy has capacity for childcare places for just 26 per cent of the age cohort of young children, below the EU target level of 33 per cent.
“It’s not only for €50 per month that you decide to have a child,” Testa said. “It’s if you have the possibility to combine your work life with your childcare duties.”
