New figures from national statistics agency Istat show Italy’s demographic crisis deepening, with barely half the number of babies born compared to 2008. It is only immigration keeping the population stable.
Italy registered its lowest ever number of births in 2025, with just 355,000 babies born across the country. This represents a fall of around 15,000 on the previous year and barely more than half the 576,000 registered in 2008, according to provisional data published on Tuesday by Istat, the national statistics agency.
The fertility rate dropped to an average of 1.14 children per woman, down from 1.18 in 2024, in what Istat confirmed as a continuation of a long structural decline. The average age at which Italian women give birth also rose slightly, from 32.6 to 32.7 years. One in eight births in Italy were to foreign parents.
Against the 355,000 births, Istat recorded 652,000 deaths in 2025. This means Italy’s natural population change was deeply negative, with deaths nearly double the number of births.
Immigration Holds the Line
Despite this stark imbalance, Italy’s overall population remained broadly stable at 58.943 million at the start of 2026, kept level by continued inward migration. Some 440,000 people moved to Italy during 2025, while 144,000 emigrated, producing a net migration figure that compensated for the natural decline.
Istat was blunt about the structural reality underpinning the numbers. “Italy remains a country where only very positive net migration can offset a largely negative natural change, and where the population continues to age,” it said. “Demographic trends are in line with those observed in recent years.”
Italy is also among the European countries with the highest life expectancy — 81.7 years for men and 85.7 years for women in 2025 — a figure that, while a mark of public health success, also intensifies the pressure on pension systems, healthcare and social services as the proportion of older citizens grows.
Meloni’s “Absolute Priority”
Premier Giorgia Meloni has repeatedly described reversing Italy’s falling birth rate as an “absolute priority” for her government. Since taking office in 2022, her administration has introduced a package of family support measures including a universal child benefit, means-tested tax breaks for working mothers, and incentives designed to encourage women to remain in the workforce after having children.
The results so far offer little comfort. The trend line has continued downward, and at 1.14, Italy’s fertility rate remains well below the 2.1 children per woman needed to maintain a stable population without migration. It is also among the lowest in Europe.
The dilemma is not uniquely Italian. Across southern and eastern Europe, fertility rates have declined sharply in recent decades as housing costs have risen, women have entered higher education and the workforce in greater numbers, and economic uncertainty has made younger generations more cautious about starting families. But Italy’s combination of very low fertility, very high life expectancy, and a persistent cultural ambivalence about immigration as a demographic solution makes the challenge particularly acute.
Births in Italy have now fallen by almost 38% since 2008, when 576,000 babies were born. On current trends, the 2025 figure of 355,000 will not be a floor, simply a milestone on a continuing descent.
