Birth rates continue to fall: 14,000 fewer births in 2025. The number of children born to foreign nationals is also falling. Istat figures

According to the latest Istat report, there were 355,772 live births in Italy in 2025, around 14,000 fewer than in 2024 (-3.8 per cent), with the decline affecting both children of Italian and foreign parents. Meanwhile, the average number of children per woman has fallen further, reaching a new all-time low (1.14), whilst the average age at childbirth has risen to 32.7 years. So far, the National Institute of Statistics confirms what it had anticipated in its estimates at the end of March. However, the report also includes provisional figures for the first seven months of 2026, showing that births (196,864 in total) fell by 1.1 per cent compared with the same period last year, as did the fertility rate (1.13). Furthermore, in 2025, there were 156,874 births to parents not married to each other, accounting for 44.1 per cent of the total and representing an increase of 0.9 per cent compared with 2024.

In 2025, therefore, there were 355,772 live births, six per thousand inhabitants. This figure represents a decrease of 3.8 per cent compared with the previous year and 38.3 per cent compared with 2008, the year in which the highest number of live births since the start of the new millennium was recorded – over 576,000, almost ten births per thousand inhabitants. In total, compared with eighteen years ago, the resident population has fallen by over 220,000. And, looking to the future, this trend shows no sign of stopping. In fact, according to the first provisional figures for the period January–July 2026, births continue to decline, albeit at a slower rate than in 2025. This translates into approximately 2,000 fewer births (-1.1 per cent), bringing the total to 196,864 children.

Istat explains that the effects of the falling birth rate stem in part from the reduction in the number of potential parents “who themselves were born from the 1980s onwards, a period in which the decline in fertility became established”. Women who are now between 30 and 40 years old – “an age group in which over 65 per cent of current births are concentrated”, the report continues – “were born between 1985 and 1995, years in which the average number of children per woman fell from 1.45 to 1.19, the lowest figure of the last century”. However, the decline in births is also due to an ever-decreasing tendency to have children. The number of births to both Italian and foreign parents is falling: the former, which totalled 275,330 this year, fell by 4.8 per cent compared with 2024 and by 42.6 per cent compared with 2008. Meanwhile, the number of children born to parents who are both foreign nationals – totalling 49,002 in 2025 – fell by 3.1 per cent compared with the previous year and by 38.7 per cent compared with 2012, the year in which the highest number was recorded. Births to mixed-nationality couples (accounting for 8.8 per cent of the total), on the other hand, are the only category to have increased (+4.2 per cent compared with 2024 and +11.8 per cent compared with 2012); this year there were 31,440 such births, confirming a trend of growth that has been ongoing since 2020.

The decline in births, even among foreign nationals, confirms a trend that began in 2010. In fact, during the first decade of the 2000s, ‘the increase in births to couples with at least one foreign partner was a particularly significant phenomenon, contributing to the overall recovery in the birth rate during that period’. However, since the first decade, we have witnessed a slow decline, with births falling from 108,005 in 2012 to 80,942 in 2023. In the last two years, however, this trend appears to have stabilised: in 2024, there were 80,761 births to at least one foreign parent, whilst in 2025 there were 80,442, accounting for 22.6 per cent of total births.

As the number of births falls, so too does the average number of children per woman – or the fertility rate – uniformly across the whole country. This year it has fallen to 1.14 from 1.18 the previous year, which in turn had already fallen below the previous all-time low of 1.19 recorded in 1995, well below the replacement rate – that is, the annual number of births needed to offset deaths and ensure population stability, set at 2.1 per cent – but also below the figure of 1.44 recorded consecutively over the three-year period 2008–2010, the highest in the new millennium. These figures apply to both Italian and foreign women. The fertility rate for Italian women has in fact fallen from 1.11 in 2024 to 1.07, whilst in 2010 it stood at 1.33; by contrast, that of foreign women has fallen from 1.81 in the previous year to 1.74, whereas in 2010 it was well above the replacement threshold (2.31). As mentioned earlier, the estimates for the first seven months of 2026 do not bode well: between January and July of this year, the average number of children per woman is estimated at 1.13.

The Istat report unfortunately confirms all the trends of recent years, including the gradual rise in the average age of women at childbirth. This applies to both Italian and foreign women. By 2025, it will rise from 32.6 years to 32.7, an increase of almost three years compared with 1995. The institute also notes that “the average age at first childbirth has reached 32 years for the first time, an increase of around four years compared with 1995, when it stood at 28.1 years”.

However, in this new report, Istat compares not only the average number of children per woman, but also fertility by birth cohort, which, it explains, compared with period fertility, “measures the tendency of different generations to have children, thereby highlighting the underlying changes in reproductive choices”. From this analysis, it is therefore possible to see how fertility has declined steadily. Whilst for women born in 1947 the average number of children was 2.01 – a figure close to the replacement threshold – “those born in 1976 (who will turn 49 in 2025, effectively bringing their reproductive lives to an end) have a final fertility rate of 1.44 children each”. Istat notes that, as generations have passed, it is above all the fertility rate for third and subsequent births that has fallen (from 0.42 to 0.16 children), whilst the proportion of women who have had no children by the end of their reproductive lives has risen. "Among women born in 1947, one in ten is in this situation, whilst in the 1976 generation the figure rises to almost one in four women without children (23 per cent)." Furthermore, for women born in 1947, the average age at childbirth was 26.9 years, whilst for those born in 1976 it rose to 31.4.