| 18/05/2016 | |
| QUARTZ |
Italy is producing so few babies that the government wants to boost the bribe it pays couples to have more kids.
Beatrice Lorenzin, Italy’s health minister, told La Repubblica last week that the government plans to double the amount of money offered to families who choose to have more children in a bid to slow the country’s “apocalyptic” birth rate.
“Just 488,000 babies were born in Italy in 2015, fewer than in any year since the modern state was founded in 1861,” the BBC reported her as saying. “If we carry on as we are and fail to reverse the trend, there will be fewer than 350,000 births a year in 10 years’ time, 40% less than in 2010—an apocalypse.”
