(Finance) – New downward record for births: registered in 2023 at 379,890, i.e 13 thousand less (-3.4%) compared to 2022. This means that for every 1,000 residents in Italy just over six children were born. A trend that continues also in 2024: based on provisional data relating to January-July births are 4,600 less compared to the same period in 2023.
This is what emerges from the last one Istat report on “Birth rate and fertility of the resident population” for the year 2023which brings the great theme of birth rate.
In Italy there is thus a again breaking the birth rate recordwhich is part of a long-standing trend: compared to 2008the year in which the number of live births exceeded 576 thousand units, representing the highest value since the beginning of the 2000s, there was a overall loss of 197 thousand units (-34.1%).
The decline in births has to do with the low tendency of women to have children (there will be 1.2 children per woman in 2023), caused by structural changes (today women born in the baby boom years have now passed the conventional threshold of 49 years) and on the one general decline in fertility female (the women who are still of childbearing age belong to the era of the so-called baby-bust, i.e. they were born during the twenty-year period 1976-1995 during which fertility dropped from over 2 to the historic minimum of 1.19 children per woman).
The decrease in births is mostly attributable to the decline in births from couples of both Italian parentswhich constitute over three-quarters of total births. Those born to Italian parents, equal to 298,948 in 2023, are approximately 12 thousand fewer than in 2022 (-3.9%)while those born from couples in which at least one of the parents is a foreigner they are 80,942, in 1.5% drop about 2022.
In 2023 the average number of children for women aged between 15 and 49 it fell to 1.20 children, down compared to the previous year (1.24) and in line with the decreasing trend underway since 2010the year in which the relative maximum of 1.44 children for women. There fertility it won’t recover even in 2024. Based on the provisional number of births recorded between January and July, the average number of children per woman is in fact estimated at 1.21in line with the previous year’s figure.
There total observed fertility suffers from anticipation and postponement effectsgiven by the choice of when to have children. In the most favorable historical moments, coinciding with a growing average age at childbirth, women tend to make up for births postponed compared to the less favorable previous period, resulting in a temporary recovery effect on the fertility indicator. This is what, for example, was found in the country between 1995 (1.19 children per woman, a historic low) and the first decade of the 2000s. At least half of the increase in the average number of children per woman recorded in this historical phase, reaching a maximum of 1.44 children per woman in 2008, occurred, in fact, thanks to the recovery of births previously postponed by Italian women.