The number of births in Italy fell to a new historic low last year, with 2023 marking the 15th consecutive year of declining births in the peninsular country, Reuters reported, citing data released on Friday by ISTAT, Rome’s statistics office. .

Italy considers the declining birthrate a national emergency, but successive governments promised to make addressing the trend a priority, and have failed to do so.

Figures published on Friday by ISTAT show that Italy registered around 379,000 births last year, down 3.6% from 2022 and 34.2% from 2008, the last year in the country recorded an increase in the number of births compared to the previous year. .

The number of births last year is also the lowest since the unification of Italy in 1861. Then the population of Italy was about 22 million, and now it is almost 60 million.

The fertility rate also continued to decline in 2023 to 1.20 children per woman from 1.24 in 2022. The fertility rate measures how many children, on average, a woman gives birth to in her lifetime. In Italy, as in other European countries, this figure is well below the threshold of 2.1, which is considered necessary to maintain the current population level.

In terms of natural increase, things were slightly better in Italy last year as the number of deaths decreased after 3 years of growth due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In 2023, the Italian authorities recorded 661,000 deaths.

In Italy, there are fewer young children than 80-year-olds

ISTAT also reports that life expectancy has reached 83.1 years, up 6 months from 2022. Although deaths outnumbered births by 282,000, Italy’s total population fell by just 7,000 last year due to increased foreign immigration and the return of some Italian expatriates.

The number of foreigners living in Italy reached 5.3 million, which is 3.2% more than the previous year. Currently, foreigners make up about 8.99% of Italy’s population, most of them living in the north of the country.

Italy’s population has been in steady decline since 2014, losing 1.36 million people over the past decade, a figure close to the total population of the country’s second-largest city, Milan.

Last September, ISTAT warned that Italy could lose almost 10% of its inhabitants over the next 25 years, in a scenario that would see the total population reach 54.4 million by 2050.

New data published by ISTAT on Friday show that almost one in four Italians is over 65 and that the number of long-lived people who have reached the age of at least 100 has reached a new record of 22,500.

The data also show that in Italy, the number of residents over 80 has exceeded the number of children under 10 for the first time.

A separate set of data released by ISTAT earlier this week also shows that one in 10 Italians live in “absolute poverty”.