Italy fertility rate hits 1.14, lowest since 1945: report

Italy's fertility rate fell to 1.14 children per woman in 2025, its lowest level since 1945, according to a report published on Tuesday by the Birthrate Foundation and Italy's National Institute of Statistics.

The report said 355,000 babies were born in Italy in 2025, down nearly 4 percent from the previous year. It said Italy would need a fertility rate of 2.1 children per woman to maintain a stable population without immigration.

"The desire for motherhood and fatherhood is still present, but it often clashes with job insecurity, high costs, incompatible lifestyles and inadequate services," the report said.

Istat calculated that if all women who said in 2024 that they wanted to have children within the next three years had done so, Italy would have recorded about 760,000 births a year, more than double the number born in 2025.

Many respondents said they feared that having a child would worsen their finances and affect their careers, a concern raised particularly by women. The report said women often stop working out of necessity when family support services are lacking.

Istat said in March that Italy's resident population remained stable in 2025 at 58.9 million people. It said the arrival of 440,000 immigrants helped offset a negative natural population balance caused by fewer births than deaths and by population ageing.