Alessandro Guarasci – Vatican City
In Italy, about 355,000 children were born in 2025, setting a new historical record for a decline of 3.9 percent compared to the previous year. In 2000, there were more than 543,000 births. According to the “2026 Birth Rate Report: To Want or To Be Able”, prepared by the Birth Rate Foundation in collaboration with ISTAT, the collapse in the birth rate in Italy is not due to a lesser desire to have children, but rather to difficulties that prevent millions of people from fulfilling their life plans.
If fertility were supported, at least 760,000 children would have been born
According to Vatican News, among Italians who choose not to have more children, 62.2 percent say that the reason for giving up is the difficulties they encounter, while only 5.5 percent declare that parenthood does not fit into their life plan. However, this is not all, as there is a wide gap between intentions and reality. If the desire to have a child declared by Italian women were fulfilled, about 760,000 children would have been born in 2025—more than twice the number that actually came into the world.
Too many economic and professional difficulties
Why, then, are people giving up? Primarily for economic and structural reasons. For more than 2.8 million Italians, financial and professional difficulties are the main obstacle to deciding to have children. Almost one in two women (49.9 percent) fears negative consequences for her career in the event of motherhood, while among men this percentage is 24 percent. The social security system also does not help those who would like to have children. More than 3 million women remain outside the labor market for family reasons, compared to 151,000 men, and 763,000 people also give up having children due to caring for elderly parents.
Who will sustain the social security system?
The report paints a picture of an increasingly aging country characterized by a growing demographic imbalance, which in the future will likely struggle to maintain the current social security system. In 2025, alongside 355,000 births, 652,000 deaths were recorded, resulting in a negative natural growth rate of 297,000 people. It is true that Italy boasts one of the highest average life expectancies in the world (83 years), but this record could increasingly burden the stability of the healthcare system, social care, and pensions. An ever-smaller number of young people will have to support an increasingly elderly society.
General States on the Birth Rate
This year’s birth rate report sends a clear message. The decline in births is not the result of a change in Italians’ desires, but of the growing difficulties in turning those dreams into reality. Narrowing the gap between “wanting” and “being able” means tackling one of the country’s main economic, social, and cultural challenges. Therefore, the Birth Rate Foundation reiterates its appeal for the issue of the birth rate to become a permanent priority on the political agenda through measures supporting women’s labor market participation, facilitating the reconciliation of family and work, promoting a fairer tax system, and ensuring young people have the conditions of stability that allow them to build their own future.
Such a challenge cannot be undertaken alone. An alliance involving the government and the opposition, businesses and trade unions, cultural circles, the third sector, and social organizations is needed to jointly create conditions that allow new generations to freely choose to have children. This topic will be the focus of the sixth edition of the so-called General States on the Birth Rate, which will be held on November 25 and 26 in Rome.
Alliance for the Birth Rate
According to Gianluigi De Palo, president of the Birth Rate Foundation, “it is clear that we have behind us about 80 years of a lack of appropriate family policies. In this sense, we have taken the family for granted, as well as the support and promotion of the family, because the family simply existed. What we repeat every year, like Cassandras, trying to draw attention to this issue, is the need to create an alliance. This is not exclusively a political matter, but an issue concerning businesses, the world of communication, culture, social organizations, banks, because we can only get out of this truly difficult situation together.
Just think of the data that made a huge impression on me: ISTAT asked women of childbearing age how many children they would like to have. If all the women who answered: ‘yes, I would like to have a child’ had realized their dreams and had a child this year, we would have had 760,000 children. Meanwhile, 355,000 were born, which is less than half. We therefore need to solve this problem—to create the conditions for people to realize their family dreams.”
