Italy breaks the historic birth rate record

For the first time, the country had fewer than 400,000 births

Italy’s birth rate hit an all-time low, falling below 400,000 for the first time in 2022, with 393,000 children, data released by the National Institute of Statistics (Istat) showed on Friday (7). The country has not recorded an increase in births since 2008.

According to the document, the decrease occurs “only in part due to the spontaneous or induced renunciation of having children by couples”. “In fact, among the causes, both the decrease in size and the progressive aging of the female population to the age conventionally called reproductive (from 15 to 49 years) weigh heavily”, reads the text.

The report also points out that after two consecutive years of high average children per woman, there was a further decline in 2022, reaching 1.24 children. With this, the number is equivalent to that recorded in 2020. The average age at childbirth for Italian women is 32.4 years.

Despite the highest fertility rate is recorded in northern Italy, in the Trentino-Alto Adige region, one of the richest in the country, with 1.51 children per woman, in the north (1.26) and in the center (1.19) Italians record drops in the overall average. Only the Mezzogiorno, the area known as the Mezzogiorno, recorded a slight increase, from 1.25 to 1.26.

The report also signals an increase in infant mortality, which rises to 12 per thousand inhabitants.

The Istat document confirmed other data that had been released in advance, such as the decline in the resident population to 58.8 million people, down by 179 thousand compared to 2021. The figure, however, decreased less intensely than in as seen in 2020 and 2021.

Life expectancy at birth for Italians is 82.6 years, with 80.5 for men (an increase of two months) and 84.8 years for women (which has remained unchanged). Furthermore, Italy has about 22,000 supercentenarians, a number that has tripled in the last 20 years. .

Source: Terra

Rose

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