Italy’s birth rate crisis is ‘irreversible’, say experts

Hundreds of Italian towns and villages had no baby births in 2023, contributing to a dramatic decline in the population that could threaten the country’s future.

Zero births were registered in 358 villages and towns in 2023 – compared with zero births in 328 communities five years previously, according to Istat, the country’s national statistics institute.

Birth rates in Italy have been falling for years but the problem is particularly acute in small, often isolated communities where the population is ageing and there are no longer couples of childbearing age.

Many of them are located in the Apennines, the chain of mountains that runs down the spine of Italy, and in the Alps in the north.

Once the population of a village starts declining, essential services such as schools, clinics and post offices close down. That in turn persuades more people to leave, either moving to cities or emigrating from Italy altogether.

“It’s a vicious cycle,” said Alessandro Rosina, an expert in demographics at the Catholic University of Milan. “The population falls, services are cut and young people move elsewhere.”

Italy’s demographic decline has been evident for at least a decade. “In 2014, the country entered a new phase of inexorable population decline,” Mr Rosina told La Repubblica newspaper.

The collapse in birth rates is most evident in the countryside.

“It is interior regions that are most affected – communities that are difficult to reach, where it is hard to access health services and schools,” Mr Rosina said, adding that the situation was “irreversible”.

The situation in some areas is so severe that the only help that can be provided is welfare.

Some villages are down to just a few dozen people. If a baby is born, against the odds, it is a matter for celebration and sometimes makes the national news.

In Dec 2023, there was rejoicing in Morterone, Italy’s smallest village, for the birth of a baby girl called Marta. She boosted the population of the village, which is tucked away in the mountains of Lombardy, in Italy’s north, to 33.

It is not just that Italian couples are having fewer babies – many would like to leave the country altogether.

More than a third of Italy’s teenagers dream of emigrating as soon as they are old enough to do so, with the most favoured destination being the US (32 per cent), followed by Spain (12 per cent) and the UK (11 per cent), according to Istat.

In March last year, the institute reported that in 2023, the number of births in Italy fell to 379,000 – a record low.

Italy has one of the oldest and most sharply declining populations in the world.

It is forecast that by 2050, the country’s population of 58 million will have dropped by five million.

More than a third of them will be over the age of 65, leading to workforce shortages and acute difficulties in funding the welfare system.

Many Italians live at home until well into their twenties and thirties. They say they cannot afford to have children in Italy, which is the only developed country where real wages have declined in the past 30 years, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.