Italy: Birth rate falls 21.6 percent during lockdown

 

According to new data on a sample of 15 Italian cities released by the National Bureau of Statistics, ISTAT, the birth rate in Italy fell by 21.6% in December last year, exactly nine months after the country was locked down due to the coronavirus. 

 

ISTAT said the number of births in Italy in 2020 is about 400,000 (down from 420,000 in 2019), and the number of deaths is 700,000 (647,000 compared with last year), which is since 1918 the biggest gap since the Spanish flu pandemic. 

 

According to the Italian newspaper "La Stampa", ISTAT chairman Gian Carlo Blangiardo said that similar high mortality rates were only recorded "in 1920 and during the Second World War" , And last year’s birth rate was the lowest since records began 150 years ago. 

 

The head of ISTAT, Blanangiardo, believes that this is caused by the “uncertainty” surrounding the pandemic and can be compared to the number of births in February 1987 after the Chernobyl disaster the previous year.