Posted on 07/19/2025 9:47:07 AM PDT by MinorityRepublican
Winding down the narrow main street of his north Italian town, Giacomo de Luca points to the businesses that have closed: two supermarkets, a barbershop, restaurants – all with shutters drawn and faded signs above their doors.
The pretty town of Fregona at the foot of the mountains is emptying out like many here, as Italians have fewer children and increasingly migrate to bigger places or move abroad.
Now the local primary school is at risk and the mayor is worried.
"The new Year One can't go ahead because there are only four children. They want to shut it down," De Luca explains. The minimum class size to get funding is 10 children.
"The drop in births and in the population has been very, very sharp."
The mayor calculates that the population of Fregona, an hour's drive north of Venice, has shrunk by almost a fifth in the past decade.
By June this year there were four new births and most of the 2,700 or so remaining residents are elderly, from the men drinking their morning prosecco to the women filling their bags with chicory and tomatoes at the weekly market.
For De Luca, closing the school reception class would be a tide-turner: if the children leave Fregona to study, he fears they will never look back.
So he's been touring the surrounding area, even visiting a nearby pizza factory, trying to persuade parents to send their children to his town and help keep the school open.
"I'm offering to pick them up with a minibus, we've offered for children to stay at school until six in the evening, all paid for by the council," the mayor told the BBC, his sense of urgency obvious.
"I'm worried. Little by little, if things keep going like this, the village will die."
(Excerpt) Read more at bbc.com ...
I am 100% in favor of removing illegal immigrants from the US.
That being said, people need to be mindful of the difficulty young people are having with dating and forming actual pair-bonds. And many people who actually marry decide that they never want kids. I think the US is going the same way as Italy or South Korea or many other countries — we’re heading for a population crash. The number of children born here in the next 10 or 20 years is likely to be shockingly small.
Import more muzzies!
That will increase baby supply immediately. 🙄🙄
Don’t look at it as dying. Look at it as exercising its reproductive rights.
“’The village will die’ - Italy looks for answers to decline in number of babies”
Can’t speak for Italy, but here it’s the 19th Amendment. Given them options and MANY will vote against having kids.
give families a great incentive to have children
You are exactly right.
In my own family, there are 4 grand parents, four children of grand parents and four spouses. So there are 12 adults but only 1 baby so far!
2
Why have babies when you can just buy a couple of dogs?
After all, “dogs are family” and “dogs are better than people”, according to many here.
Could it be the COVID-19 vaccine? Say it ain’t so Joe.
Make the incentives financial, referably in the form of tax cuts.
I just watched a presentation on demographics and the change in the labor force since 2020. There was of course a cliff of change at that time. The reason we have fewer births, near full employment and it is hard to find employees is explained.
Longish and the guy talks fast but you can advance it faster as you desire and absorb the charts. There are other presentations on the same subject of course.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w05QgHwq8Ig&t=590s
The biggest complaint about birth rates that are less than necessary to sustain the population, about 2.1 or something like that, is that there will not be enough taxpayers to support old age benefits. That is a bad reason to have children. If that is our reason and our reason for concern then we are no better than Nigeria where they have lots of children hoping one will survive that can take care of them in old age. The odds of survival are so low in some groups they don’t even name their children until they are 10 or 12.
Some countries have tried that. They never work.
The only thing that can work is to have some sort of religious/cultural institution.
Passing the 19th amendment was obviously a big mistake.
Italians aren’t having many babies. This has been known for decades. Same for most other civilized countries. The politicians chose not to do anything about it, but instead made it much harder to be able to afford to become parents.
Russia has a baby bonus, and Trump wants one too for the USA. That will be a good start. Better get going - there are millions of bearded savages trying to get into the country who will make tens of millions of little savages who will grow up to be bearded savages if they are allowed.
Dogs never argue, never smoke weed or do drugs, eat only what you give them, dont need toilet paper or college tuition. And they wag their tail every time we come home.
Yeah well thats not working and they're at 1.42.
Chime and Mexico have moved under .9 per couple. The pattern I similar worldwide. People move from country to city where it’s too expensive and confusing to have babies. So they don’t .
My younger sister married a Mexican. She has 4 kids, and 14 grandchildren. Me and my other siblings only have a couple kids and a few grandkids each. Maybe the path to more children is to marry foreigners.
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