Births in Italy dropped to a new historic low below 400,000 in 2022, national statistics bureau ISTAT said on Friday, as the population continued to shrink. Italy's death of babies is considered a national emergency, and fixing the problem was a prominent policy pledge by Giorgia Meloni ahead of last year's election which saw her become the country's first woman prime minister.

Last year Italy recorded more than 12 deaths for every seven births and the resident population fell by 179,000 to 58.85 million, ISTAT said in its annual demographic report. The population decline slowed somewhat compared with 2021 and 2020, two years heavily affected by the COVID-19 pandemic.