Sixty years of declining births: Italian fertility falls to 1.14
The Istat bulletin on demographic indicators for 2025 and the monthly balance sheets for 2026 measure a curve that starts in 1964: 355,000 births, a natural balance of -296,000, one resident in four over 65. The population remains nearly stationary only because of migration.
The source is the Istat report “Demographic Indicators – Year 2025,” released with the bulletin of March 30, 2026 and taken up in the analysis by the Osservatorio sui Conti Pubblici Italiani; detailed data are also reported by Quotidiano Sanità. The comparison interval is not last year: it is 1964, when more than one million children were born in Italy.
From that peak the series declines with few interruptions. Births fell below 500,000 in 2014, below 400,000 in 2022. In 2025 births numbered 355,000, down 3.9% from 2024. The average number of children per woman reaches a historic low of 1.14, with the average age at childbirth risen to 32.7 years.
The second indicator is the natural balance, that is the difference between births and deaths: -296,000 units in 2025, against -283,000 in 2024, with 652,000 deaths. Despite this, as of January 1, 2026 residents number 58 million 943 thousand, a substantially stable figure: the compensation comes entirely from the migratory balance, of similar magnitude. Residents of foreign citizenship number 5 million 560 thousand, having grown by 188,000 units (+3.5%) in one year, equal to 9.4% of the population.
The third series concerns age. Those over 65 have increased by 11.3% in ten years and now represent 25.1% of residents; life expectancy is 81.7 years for men and 85.7 for women. It is the combination of the two movements — fewer births, more elderly — that gives the curve its shape, not either one taken alone.
On the side of intentions, Istat notes that the share of 18-49 year-olds declaring they want to have a child fell from 50.7% in 2003 to 45.3% in 2024. Here the limit lies in the nature of the data: it is a sample survey of declared intentions, which measures orientations and not behaviors, and should be read as a twenty-one-year trend, not as a forecast. Even the within-year data must be handled for what they are: the Istat monthly demographic balance sheet records 56,000 births in the first two months of 2026, -1.7% compared with the same period of 2025, but it covers two months out of twelve and is an update in progress during the year, not an annual total.
On the labor market the direction, for now, is the opposite: the Istat release “Employed and Unemployed – July 2026,” issued September 1 and published as provisional data, counts 24 million 370 thousand employed, 307,000 more year-on-year, with an employment rate of 63.2% and unemployment at 5.8%; the youth rate, however, rises to 18.9% (Format Research, SoldiOnline).
The two series move at different paces: employment is measured month by month, the age composition moves over decades. With those over 65 at 25.1% of residents and a natural balance of -296,000, the stability of the total population today depends on a single factor, the migratory balance.
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