Europe

Births in Italy drop to historic low

Just 379,000 babies were born in 2023 despite efforts to reverse decline

Italy's prime minister Giorgia Meloni has said it is a priority for her goverment to increase the birth rate. Photograph: Sameer Al-Doumy/AFP via Getty Images

Fri Mar 29 2024 - 19:46

Births in Italy dropped 3.6 per cent last year to an all-time low, highlighting the challenge facing prime minister Giorgia Meloni as she seeks to reverse the rapid ageing of the population.

Just 379,000 babies were born in Italy in 2023, down from the previous year’s record low of 393,000, which Istat, the national statistical agency, had then noted was the fewest births since Italy’s unification in 1861.

Istat said data showed no sign of a thaw in Italy’s “demographic winter”, during which fertility rates have slid far below the replacement level of 2.1, as many Italian women choose to have few or no children.

In the data released on Friday Istat said Italy’s total fertility rate – the average number of children per woman – fell to 1.2 in 2023, down from 1.24 the previous year, and close to the all-time low of 1.19 recorded in 1995.

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Of the babies born in Italy in 2023, 13.3 per cent were the children of foreign citizens living in the country, down from 15 per cent a decade ago, Istat data shows.

Ms Meloni, a mother of one, has said it is a priority for her government to increase the birth rate and encourage women to have more babies “for the simple reason that we want Italy to have a future again”.

Experts warn there is no quick fix to reversing Italy’s demographic decline, which they say will require long-term policies that address the real economic and social causes of the decline..

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“There is a lot of rhetoric about the role of the mother, but if you don’t earn money, you can’t be a mother any more,” said Azzurra Rinaldi, director of the school of gender economics at Unitelma-Sapienza university in Rome. “You need to help women go to work, earn their money and then they can decide to be mothers.”

Italian women on average had their first child aged about 32, which reduces their child-bearing window, said Istat.

Fertility rates have fallen below the replacement level in many advanced economies, but Italy’s demographic crisis is one of the most acute in western Europe after decades of economic stagnation.

Istat said Italy has more than 4.5 million people over the age of 80, while there were 4.4 million children under the age of 10.

Demographer Francesco Billari, rector of Milan’s Bocconi University, said reversing the trend would “take time and stability of policies ... which should not be seen as partisan”.

“It’s unlikely that a strong drive from a single government will radically change the way people see becoming a parent,” he said. “We are talking of the most long-term decisions that humans can take.”

Ms Meloni has continued a child allowance scheme introduced by the previous government in 2021 and slightly increased the monthly sums families receive for small children, but her right-wing government has also experimented with other incentives.

After coming to power in late 2022, the coalition government halved VAT on infant products such as baby formula and nappies, but it has since scrapped those tax cuts. This year Italy allocated €1 billion in other measures aimed at supporting mothers, including temporarily making pension contributions on behalf of working women who have at least two young children.

But Maria Rita Testa, a demographer at Rome’s Luiss university, said policymakers needed to address other factors, including parents’ economic stability and access to affordable childcare, now in acutely short supply.

“They should try to tackle the problem of reconciliation of family and work tasks,” Ms Testa said.

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Italy had planned to use some of the €200 billion in EU recovery funds it receives to build new childcare facilities for 260,000 infants and preschool aged children, but Rome has now cut that target to 160,000.

Yet even if Rome can make Italy – and its employers – more family-friendly, experts say the country still faces formidable structural obstacles to stabilising its shrinking population.

Italy has just 11.4 million women of reproductive age – aged 15-49 – down from the 13.8 million women in that bracket 20 years ago.

“We don’t have many potential mothers and fathers now because of past low fertility,” said Mr Billari. “Even if there is a recovery in the number of children per couple, the potential couples are decreasing.”

– Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2024

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