Italy’s fertility rate falls to 80-year low: Report
Sign up now: Get ST's newsletters delivered to your inbox
Italy would need a fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman to maintain a stable population without immigration.
PHOTO: EPA
- Italy's fertility rate dropped to 1.14 in 2025, the lowest since 1945, with births falling nearly 4% to 355,000 due to economic pressures and lack of support for working mothers.
- Women often avoid having children over fears of financial hardship and career impact, with many stopping work out of necessity because of inadequate family support.
- Italy's population stayed stable at 58.9 million in 2025, helped by 440,000 immigrants offsetting the natural population decline from fewer births than deaths.
AI generated
ITALY – Births in Italy fell in 2025 by nearly 4 per cent, with its fertility rate dropping to a historic low not seen since 1945, due to economic pressures and lack of help for working mothers, a report published on July 28 found.
With 355,000 babies born in 2025, the fertility rate, or the average number of children per woman, dropped to 1.14, according to the report by the Birthrate Foundation and the Italian National Institute of Statistics (Istat).
Italy would need a fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman to maintain a stable population without immigration, the report found.
“The desire for motherhood and fatherhood is still present, but it often clashes with job insecurity, high costs, incompatible lifestyles and inadequate services,” the report said.
Istat calculated that had all the women who said in 2024 they wanted to have children within the next three years actually done so, Italy would have recorded about 760,000 births annually – more than double the number of births in 2025.
Many respondents said they feared that having a child would worsen their financial situation and impact their careers – a concern voiced particularly by women.
“When family support services are lacking, it is women who fill the void: they stop working not by choice, but out of necessity,” the report said.
In March, Istat noted that despite the decline in births, the number of residents in Italy remained stable in 2025, at 58.9 million people.
The arrival of 440,000 immigrants helped “offset Italy’s negative natural population balance, caused by fewer births than deaths, and its ageing population”. it said. AFP
