The number of births among the resident population in Italy in 2021 is 400,249, down 4,500 from 2020 (-1.1%), setting a new record for the lowest birth rate. The number of births has dropped by 176,410 (-30.6%) since 2008. This drop is nearly entirely due to births to couples with both Italian parents (314,371 in 2021, almost 166 thousand less than in 2008). The government's statistical agency made the announcement. This is a major occurrence, in part as a result of the structural consequences caused by the large changes in the female population of reproductive age, which is traditionally fixed between 15 and 49 years. There are fewer and fewer Italian women in this age group because, on the one hand, the so-called baby-boomers (i.e., women born in the second half of the sixties and the first half of the seventies) have almost entirely left the reproductive phase, and, on the other hand, the younger generations are becoming less and less consistent. Actually, the latter group feels the pain of the "baby-bust," or the period of sharply declining fertility between 1976 and 1995 that resulted in a record low of 1.19 children per woman in that year. Overall, marriage-related births declined above all (because to the substantial reduction in marriage) to 240,428, over 20 thousand fewer than in 2020 and 223 thousand less than in 2008 (-48.2%).
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