Ciao ciao bambini: Plummeting birthrate a headache for Italy
By Alvise Armellini / AFP, CALTAGIRONE, Italy
When Daniela Vicino started work as a teacher in Sicily three decades ago, she had up to 30 children in her classes. With the birthrate tumbling, that number has almost halved.
There are now “18-20 at best, and even 15-16 in some cases,” she told reporters in the southeastern town of Caltagirone. “It is a very painful thing.”
Italy has long suffered one of the lowest birthrates in Europe, but the situation has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic saddling the country with problems that go well beyond empty cribs.
When Daniela Vicino started work as a teacher in Sicily three decades ago, she had up to 30 children in her classes. With the birth rate tumbling, that number has almost halved. There are now "18-20 at best, and even 15-16 in some cases," she told AFP in the south-eastern town of Caltagirone, adding: "It is a very painful thing." Italy has long suffered one of the lowest birth rates in Europe, but the situation has been exacerbated by the.
Ciao ciao bambini: Italy s birth rate is plummeting
AFP/Caltagirone, Italy Filed on May 14, 2021
Estela Ventura feeds her son Yerik with a bottle of donated breast milk at Son Espases Hospital in Palma de Mallorca on May 13, 2021.
(AFP)
Last year, Italy s population shrank by 400,000 roughly the size of the city of Florence
When Daniela Vicino started work as a teacher in Sicily three decades ago, she had up to 30 children in her classes. With the birth rate tumbling, that number has almost halved.
There are now “18-20 at best, and even 15-16 in some cases,” she told AFP in the southeastern town of Caltagirone. “It is a very painful thing.”