"Unfortunately, Italy has recently set a new All-Time Low, as there were NO BIRTHS in the entire Country for three Months," says an October 4, 2023 blog post on Medium, an open publishing platform.
An October 18 YouTube video with similar claims compares Italy's declining birth rate to the aging population of Japan. Shorter clips have also circulated on Facebook, Instagram and TikTok -- some falsely linking the supposed lack of newborns to adverse vaccine effects.
Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni said in October that with a larger elderly population and fewer young people to support them, the country may be unable to meet its welfare demands by 2050. Japan faces similar issues.
However, claims of no recent births in Italy are false.
The country's National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) releases monthly provisional population data with birth records (archived here). The agency reported 33,753 live births in July and 33,093 in August.
Italian newspapers also chronicled several births in September:
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