The birth rate in Italy has reached a new record low since after Unification. Demographers are certain that confirmation will come in March from ISTAT: 2023 ended with about 380,000 new births, down further from the 393,000 cradles in 2022. Most striking are the data from recent post-pandemic years: from 2020 to 2022, Italy lost one in three new births (-29.3%) compared to the three-year period from 2008 to 2010, the last time there was a relatively high national birth rate compared to today. Moreover, the decline was uniform almost everywhere from North to South, with the only exception being Trentino Alto Adige (-14.8%), which seems to have held up more than other areas. The decline in births weighed particularly heavily in Valle d'Aosta (-40.4%) and Sardinia (-40.4%) or Marche (-36.2%), exceeding the national average trend in Lombardy and Lazio (-32.9%), but also in southern regions such as Puglia (-30.2%).
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