Italy: Birthrates at Historic Lows, Migrants Approach Nine Per Cent of Population

According to new figures, Italy has seen a historically low birthrate in 2018, as the number of foreigners in the country has increased to nearly 9 per cent of the total population.

The new statistics, released by the Italian statistics agency Istat, reveal that the number of live births in 2018 totalled just 439,747, an 18,404 drop from the previous year and numbers that amount to the lowest birth rate since the unification of the country in the 1800s, Il Giornale reports.

As couples are having fewer children — just 1.32 per woman according to Istat — households are also becoming smaller across the country, with nearly one-third of all households being single individuals and just one-third being families with children.

{snip}

The foreign population of Italy, however, has seen substantial growth in recent years and now accounts for 5,255,503 people — or 8.7 per cent of the total population of the country — increasing by 2.2 per cent in 2018. Net migration, however, declined slightly, from 188,330 in 2017 to 175,364 in 2018.

{snip}