It is not a country for young people, between youth emigration and an increase in the elderly, but today the situation is the worst ever.
Italy's birth rate will decline further, in a picture that already foreshadows a great depopulation, because the economic and health uncertainty given by the pandemic aggravates the general picture.
Already in 2019 the Bel Paese registered 420.000 births in 2019 (the lowest rate since the unification of Italy in 1861) compared to 647.000 people died. This year the birth rate in Italy could drop further, to around 408.000 births, while coronavirus deaths will bring total deaths over 700.000. To say it are the second recent ones Istat estimates, the national statistical agency.
The causes?
It is legitimate to hypothesize that the climate of fear and uncertainty and the growing difficulties of a material nature generated by recent events will have a negative impact on the fertility decisions of Italian couples and on the birth rate in Italy.
Gian Carlo Blangiardo, president of Istat
Regarding the total deaths expected in 2020, Blangiardo says it bluntly: “It is a truly worrying figure for the birth rate in Italy. The last time something similar happened was in 1944, when we were in the bloodiest phases of the Second World War."
Italy, the first European country hit by the pandemic, has suffered a brutal first and second wave, with more than 71.000 confirmed coronavirus deaths since the end of February. Meanwhile, the unemployment rate has risen from 9,4% this year to 11% in 2021.
Women are the most affected of all
Women have borne the brunt of the economic consequences of the pandemic: there are many difficulties with work, or with the need to stay at home to assist the children who have found themselves with closed schools.
Even before the pandemic, less than half of Italians of working age were employed. And there were numerous difficulties for those who became pregnant.
The consequences on the birth rate in Italy are almost inevitable: gender inequality, lack of jobs and childcare services, more pandemic. Those who still have a job, this is the reality, ask themselves: "If today I had another child, would I still have a job tomorrow?".
In Italy, according to Istat, there are 5 people over 65 for each child.
The aging of the population is a problem for a country system, not only for the economy and for the payment of pensions, but because a lower birth rate in Italy means fewer young people. And fewer young people means less energy and ideas.
