With 379 thousand new births in 2023, the country’s demographic winter continues. Data is still provisional, but it confirms one trend visible for some years. Compared to 2022, births decreased by 14 thousand units (3.6% less). Compared to 2008, the last “peak” year, the decline is more than a third (-34.2%). It means almost 200 thousand fewer newborns in just 15 years.
-197 thousand born in Italy in 2023 compared to 2008.
A decrease that concerns both those born with and without Italian citizenship, and which it also affects the birth rate, or the number of new births in relation to inhabitants. In 2023 it dropped to 6.4 births per thousand inhabitants, from 6.7 in 2022.
As we have had the opportunity to explore in depth in the past, this dynamic of progressive demographic decline poses amortgage on the future of the country. With an aging population, without generational turnover, the social, social security and healthcare systems are destined to become unsustainable. With repercussions especially on the weakest part of societystarting with people – in many cases even minors – in conditions of economic difficulty or social exclusion.
14% minors in absolute poverty in 2023. For years it has been the age group most affected by hardship.
A worrying decline for his too consequences at a territorial level: in fact, in over 6 out of 10 municipalities the birth rate is even lower than the national average.
How much births have decreased in the last 15 years
The 2008 was the last “peak” year within the brief demographic growth that occurred in the mid-2000s. Since then the downward curve has never stopped and every year marks new negative records.
GRAPHIC
TO KNOW
The figure for 2023 is a provisional estimate.
SOURCE: openpolis processing – With Children on Istat data
(last update: Friday 29 March 2024)
Over the course of 15 years, births have decreased by almost 200 thousand units, more than a third less than at the end of the 2000s.
A descent that is also visible in the collapse of the birth rate, i.e. the number of new born relative to the number of residents in the country. There were 9.7 births per thousand inhabitants in 2008, a figure that dropped to 8.3 in 2014 it’s at 7 in 2019, last year before Covid. Since then the figure has fallen below the psychological threshold of 7, settling at 6.8 in the two-year period 2020-21up to the current 6.4 according to preliminary estimates for 2023.
The territorial dimension of the decline in births
This decline is also visible in different territories. Between 2014 and 2021 (last data for which estimates are available at municipal level), the birth rate decreased in over 5,600 municipalities, or 71.6% of the total.
In 61.6% of municipalities the birth rate recorded in 2021 was lower than the national average for the same year (6.8 births per thousand inhabitants). Only in 36.6% of cases was this figure exceeded. In particular in the province of Bolzano (where almost 9 out of 10 municipalities exceed the Italian birth rate), in the Ragusa area (83.3% of the municipalities above the average) and in the metropolitan cities of Catania (81%) and Naples ( 70.7%).
GRAPHIC
TO KNOW
The birth rate is the ratio between the number of live births in the year and the average size of the resident population, multiplied by 1,000.
SOURCE: openpolis processing – With Children on Istat data (experimental statistics)
(last update: Friday 8 March 2024)
Among the capitals Catania is the municipality with the highest birth rate in 2021: 8.6 births per thousand inhabitants. Followed by the cities of Andria, Barletta and Palermo, with at least 8 births per thousand residents. While in the last places several Sardinian cities and one from the Marche stand out: Ascoli Piceno (4.9), Oristano (4.9), Cagliari (4.5), Nuoro (4) and Carbonia. In the municipality of Southern Sardinia the birth rate stood at 3.1 births per thousand inhabitants in 2021.
A trend with structural causes, but not to be underestimated
It is a phenomenon that has first and foremost structural roots. Linked to the fact that there are fewer and fewer people of childbearing age – with the economic boom generation exiting reproductive age.
The decline in births is partly caused by structural changes in the female population of childbearing age, conventionally set between 15 and 49 years. In this segment of the population, women are in fact fewer than they used to be. Those born in the baby-boom years (from the second half of the 1960s to the first half of the 1970s) have almost all exited the reproductive phase while those who are still there today are suffering from the effect of the so-called baby-bust, i.e. the continuous reduction in fertility in the twenty-year period 1976-1995 which led to the historic minimum of 1.19 children per woman in 1995.
This trend, on which it is obviously very difficult to intervene immediately, explains approximately two thirds of the collapse in births in recent years. At the same time, the remaining third of the decrease is due to a decline in the fertility rate.
It’s about complex issues, connected to social and cultural factors much broader and which do not only concern our country, therefore Simplistic readings (or, worse, responses) must be absolutely avoided. At the same time, it should not be underestimated as an overall investment in a set of interventions in favor of reconciling family and work can represent support in the choice of parenthood.
Among these undoubtedly the investment in parental leaveon child allowance and on services, particularly those for children, often still not very present in large parts of the country. These can provide necessary, although not sufficient, support. There is no public policy that, alone, is capable of reversing the trend. But this does not mean that further steps in this direction are useless.
Download, share and reuse data
Download the data, region by region
Abruzzo, Basilicata, Calabria, Campania, Emilia-Romagna, Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Lazio, Liguria, Lombardy, Marche, Molise, Piedmont, Puglia, Sardinia, Sicily, Tuscany, Trentino-Alto Adige, Umbria, Valle d’Aosta, Veneto , National total.
The contents of the #conibambini educational poverty observatory are created by openpolis with the social enterprise Con i Bambini as part of the fund to combat child educational poverty. We make the data used in the article available in open format. We collected and processed them so that we could analyze them in relation to other public source datasets, with the aim of creating a single territorial database on services. They can be freely reused for analysis, initiatives data journalism or even for simple consultation. The data relating to the birth rate come from Istat and were released as part of experimental statistics. For processing purposes, they were compared with data on the average birth rate in Italy, again from Istat.
Photo: mohadese marvi (Unsplash) – License
