Empty cradles, work and GDP, the impossible equation of demography
The birth crisis. The numbers in Italia, the socio-economic impact of denatality and possible remedies, from family support to migration flows
In 2025, 355,000 children will be born in Italy (-3.9% compared to 2024). Once again, the Istat data - published at the end of March - was accompanied by headlines about the new negative record and demographic winter. Someone also recalled Elon Musk's observation that 'Italia is disappearing' (published in X to accompany the 2024 figure of 370 thousand births).
The sense of déjà-vu is perfectly justified, because we are facing an established trend that so far no public policy has even managed to stop, if not actually reverse. ISTAT has estimated an average number of children per woman of 1.14 in 2025. To keep the population in balance, the fertility rate would have to be 2.1. Even the province of Bolzano, which remains the area in Italy where most girls and boys are born, stands at 1.55. Several provinces are below the threshold of one child per woman: Rimini, Viterbo and all the Sardinian provinces with the sole exception of Nuoro (standing at 1.00 round). To have a term of comparison, the national average figure was 1.25 in 2021, in the aftermath of a particular year like 2020 marked by Covid.
Questioning the origins of this phenomenon and reasoning about remedies means reflecting on the deep movements of society, with economic and collective psychology implications.
In the 1960s, on the wave of the economic boom, Italia reached one million new births in a single year. This may suggest that there is some correlation between GDP and population growth. The reasoning seems to hold up - at first glance - if one remembers that the disposable income of Italian households has stagnated, in real terms, between 2005 and 2025. And that the concentration of Italians' wealth, as measured by the Bank of Italy, has become even more unequal: between 2010 and 2025 the richest 10% of households have come to hold 60% of the total wealth, a growth of almost ten points; while the wealth of the poorest 50% of households, who have only 7.4% of the national stock, has shrunk by one point.
But to shake these simplistic readings we need only look at the case of China, which has seen its fertility rate plummet to Italian levels despite the extraordinary leap in its economy over the past 40 years. And even the United States is below 2.1. Few children are being born in rich economies - stagnant or bright - and also in emerging economies.
