Italy Is Running Out of Italians — Yet It Is Restricting Ius Sanguinis: A Policy That Fails to Look Ahead

Italy is facing a problem that can no longer be dismissed as a distant threat: the country is running out of children, young people and, progressively, workers. Yet precisely at a time when demographic decline should compel policymakers to think seriously about how to renew and expand the country’s human capital, Giorgia Meloni’s government has chosen to restrict access to Italian citizenship iure sanguinis for descendants of Italians living abroad.

The contradiction deserves to be examined through the numbers.

In 2025, only 355,000 children were born in Italy, compared with 370,000 in 2024 — a decline of 15,000 births in a single year. In 1964, roughly one million children were born annually. The fertility rate has fallen to 1.14 children per woman, far below the replacement level of approximately 2.1 required to maintain a stable population.

Another indicator is equally troubling: Italians are having children increasingly late in life. The average age of mothers has risen from 31.6 to 32.7 over the past decade and, according to 2025 figures cited by Istat, now stands at 33.4 among Italian women, compared with 31.4 among foreign-born women.

More than 2.8 million Italians identify economic and employment insecurity as the main obstacle preventing them from becoming parents.

Motherhood Still Comes at a Price

Around 38% of new mothers are not employed at the time they give birth. One working woman in five leaves her job after the birth of her first child.

Nearly one woman in two — 49.9% — fears that having a child will negatively affect her career.

This is the so-called child penalty: motherhood continues to carry a professional cost that fatherhood does not bear to the same degree.

Another figure captures the imbalance with particular clarity. Roughly 151,000 men are economically inactive for family reasons. Among women, the number exceeds three million — a ratio of approximately one to twenty.

Italy’s demographic decline therefore cannot be explained solely by cultural change or individual lifestyle choices. It reflects a broader combination of insecure employment, housing difficulties, low wages, inadequate public services and persistent gender inequality. Together, these factors push many couples to postpone having their first child until, in some cases, postponement gradually turns into renunciation.

Every Year, Italy Loses the Equivalent of a City the Size of Catania

The consequences are already visible.

In 2025, Italy recorded 355,000 births and 652,000 deaths, producing a natural population decrease of approximately 297,000 people.

It is as if, in the space of a single year, a city the size of Catania disappeared from the map.

And the process repeats itself year after year.

Three Million Fewer Working-Age People Before 2035

Then comes the economic impact.

Current projections suggest that Italy could lose more than three million people aged between 15 and 64 before 2035.

By 2050, the working-age population could fall from 37.2 million to fewer than 30 million — a decline of roughly 21%.

Even if labour-force participation among women and older workers were to increase, the active population could still shrink from 24.8 million to 21.6 million, meaning 3.2 million fewer potential workers.

This has direct implications for national wealth. According to Bank of Italy estimates cited in analyses of the demographic crisis, population decline could reduce Italy’s potential GDP by around 5%.

Fewer workers mean lower productive capacity, mounting recruitment difficulties for businesses, fewer taxpayers and a smaller economic base from which to finance the welfare state.

From 38 to 64 Elderly People for Every 100 Working-Age Residents

This is where perhaps the most dangerous contradiction emerges.

Italy is one of the world’s longest-living countries, with life expectancy at around 83.4 years. This is an extraordinary social achievement. But a society can sustain a large elderly population only if it preserves a sufficiently broad base of workers.

Today, people aged over 65 account for approximately 24.3% of the population. By 2050, they could represent 34.6%. Over the same period, the share of people aged between 15 and 64 could fall from 63.5% to 54.3%.

Put more starkly, Italy could move from roughly 38 elderly people for every 100 people of working age to 64.

The Italian pension system is financed primarily through contributions paid by current workers to fund current pensions. Demography is therefore not an abstract issue: fewer workers and more pensioners inevitably mean increasing pressure on pensions, healthcare, long-term care and the public finances.

There is a further paradox. An ageing society requires more family care precisely when that burden already falls disproportionately on women. According to the figures cited, 763,000 people give up or postpone plans to have children partly because of caregiving responsibilities. Among those who do not intend to have children, 11.5% cite caring for parents as one of the reasons; among people aged 35 to 44, the figure rises to 12%.

The generation that should be having children increasingly finds itself caring for the generation that is growing old.

And in the Face of All This, Italy Restricts Ius Sanguinis?

It is within this context that the recent restrictions on citizenship by descent introduced by the Meloni government become difficult to understand as part of any coherent long-term strategy.

Italy possesses something that many European countries do not: a vast global diaspora formed through more than a century of emigration.

Millions of people in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, the United States, Canada, Australia, Venezuela and elsewhere descend from Italians. Among them are people who speak Italian, maintain family ties with Italy, study its culture, visit the country, invest in it, or might be willing to study, work, build businesses and raise families there.

Of course, not every descendant of an Italian wants to live in Italy. Nor does granting citizenship automatically create a new worker or resident. Strengthening Italian communities abroad also means strengthening Italy’s economic and cultural influence, by preserving a global population that identifies with Italy, supports Italian industry and culture, and can help the country retain relevance in an increasingly competitive international environment.

But that is precisely why a modern policy should do something far more intelligent than simply closing the door: it should transform citizenship and the diaspora into instruments of connection, development and international projection.

What is difficult to justify is treating this global community primarily as an administrative burden, or as a body of “foreigners” capable of altering the electoral will of residents, at precisely the moment when Italy needs to attract people.

Italy Will Need Births, Women, Immigration — and Its Diaspora

Fabio Panetta, Governor of the Bank of Italy, has himself warned that Italy could lose more than seven million working-age people by 2050.

Italy will need higher employment rates among women and young people. It will need better wages, affordable housing, childcare services, stable family policies and a more equal distribution of caring responsibilities so that those who want children are actually able to have them.

It will need productivity, investment and technology.

But it will also need regular immigration, as Panetta has explicitly acknowledged.

And it is logical to add one further element: an intelligent policy towards the millions of descendants of Italians living around the world.

This is not to argue that an Argentine, Brazilian or American with an Italian ancestor will somehow solve Italy’s demographic crisis. That would be absurd.

The point is rather that a country losing population needs to attract, integrate and retain human capital, not pre-emptively narrow every possible route through which people might enter, settle or reconnect with the country.

In 2025, Italy lost 297,000 inhabitants through natural population decline. Before 2035, it could lose more than three million people of working age. By 2050, it could have 64 elderly people for every 100 working-age residents. Its active population could fall to 21.6 million, while demographic decline could cost the country around 5% of its potential GDP.

This is the real Italy around which citizenship and immigration policy should be designed.

The central question, therefore, should not simply be how many generations should be allowed to transmit Italian citizenship.

The far more important question is this:

Who will live in Italy, work in Italy, have children, pay taxes, care for the elderly and keep the country economically and socially alive twenty or thirty years from now?

At a time when the numbers describe a country that is shrinking and ageing, a citizenship and immigration policy built primarily around restriction seems more concerned with defending an image of the past than with building the future.

And Italy’s real challenge is no longer to preserve a photograph of what the country once was.

Pablo Munini