Italy’s birth rate has fallen to a record low since World War II, with only 355,000 births in 2025, and a fertility rate of 1.14 — dangerously below replacement rate. Both the birth rate and fertility rate fell from 2024 to 2025. Italy faces a demographic winter with an aging population.

Key Takeaways:

• Italy’s population, recorded at the beginning of this year, was 58.94 million – a drop from the peak population of 60.8 million reported in 2014.

• Italy recorded 355,000 births in 2025 – a drop from 369,000 births in 2024.

• In 2025, Italy’s fertility rate fell to 1.14 children born per woman, down from 1.18 children born per woman in 2024. These rates are far below the replacement rate of 2.1 births per woman.

• Italy’s number of deaths far outnumbered the number of births in 2025. Last year, there were 355,000 births recorded against 652,000 deaths.

The Details:

Space Daily and Wanted in Rome reported the data released by ISTAT, Italy’s national statistics agency.

ISTAT released a projection last year, which suggested that Italy’s population will fall from approximately 59 million people in 2025 to 54.7 million people by 2050. Space Daily notes that this represents a loss of over 4 million people in just 25 years, the equivalent of the entire population of Norway. Over time, the projected population loss is set to accelerate, with fewer women being born in each successive generation.

Italy’s population is rapidly aging, with already 24% of the population aged 65 or older, and a median age of 48 — the highest of the large European countries. With fewer working people to support the elderly through the pension and healthcare systems, Italy is set to experience serious economic and social strain.

Underpopulation is already bad enough that towns in Sicily are selling houses for 1 Euro each, according to Space Daily.

Zoom In:

Survey data suggests that Italians are having fewer children, not through lack of desire, but out of economic, professional, and social fears. Over half of the Italians surveyed who have decided not to have more children said they had given up primarily because of perceived obstacles related to career and economics. Just 5.5% of survey-takers said that parenthood was simply not a life plan.

Whatever the reasons may be for Italians having fewer children, the country is facing a population crisis. 

The vulnerable, particularly the elderly, are at risk of losing the support of the ever-shrinking population of the young and working.

The Bottom Line:

Several regions in Italy are looking to expand assisted suicide, which is especially concerning due to the aging population, and could place pressure on the vulnerable elderly to die. Last year, Tuscany became the first region in Italy to legalize assisted suicide. South Tyrol is similarly looking to allow assisted suicide locally.

Euthanasia is still a crime in Italy, prohibited in the Italian Criminal Code. In 2019, the Italian Constitutional Court ruled that euthanasia is not a crime if committed by will of the patient because of a chronic, life-threatening condition or intolerable pain. However, as the Italian Parliament never came to a decision on the issue, there is no national legal framework in place for assisted suicide.