The natural balance turns positive only in a belt of towns between Naples and Caserta. Everywhere else, Italy has shrunk every year since 2019.
In 2025, in almost every Italian town, the tally ended the same way: more deaths than births. The country has been losing residents for years, and "denatalità" — the birth dearth — leads every front page. Giugliano in Campania runs the other way. In 2025 it recorded 1,078 births against 882 deaths, a natural balance of +196, the best in Italy. This is no hamlet. It is a city of 125,018 people on the edge of Naples.
Where more children are still born than die is not scattered at random. It is a tight cluster between the northern edge of Naples and the Aversa plain. Orta di Atella closed 2025 at +136, Gricignano di Aversa at +89, Quarto at +87, Trentola Ducenta at +82. Just below sit Volla and Poggiomarino, both at +65. This is no accident. These are young towns, with cheap housing and families that are still large. Outside this belt, across the whole country, the plus sign all but vanishes.
Natural balance 2025 (births minus deaths), top eight towns. Source: DatiItalia, ISTAT data.
In absolute numbers, babies are born where the most people live. Rome recorded 15,817 in 2025, Milan 9,297, Naples 6,173 — the country's largest cities also top the birth count. But births are one thing, the balance another. In all three, deaths outnumber births, and the population holds only thanks to people arriving from elsewhere. High births, balance in the red. Giugliano's record matters precisely because there the plus sign is home-grown.
Total births in 2025, top six towns. Source: DatiItalia, ISTAT data.
The birth-rate ranking tells yet another story. At the top sits Carrega Ligure, in the Alessandria Apennines, with 26.0 births per 1,000 residents; then Elva, in the Maira valley, at 25.3; and Massimeno, in Trentino, at 22.4. They look like Italy's cradles. They are not: these are villages of a few dozen residents, where a handful of newborns sends the rate soaring. The solid figure, in Campania, is lower: Morigerati, in the Cilento, stops at 19.2 per 1,000. At the far end lies Colledimacine, in Abruzzo, with an old-age index of 7,900, the highest in the country — there the elderly dwarf the children. It is the same country whose residents have fallen every year since 2019, down from a peak of 59,636,271 to 58,942,828 at the start of 2026. The question is not why Italy has so few children. It is why it still has them, and only, in a strip of towns north of Naples.
Resident population, censuses from 1951 to today. The peak is 2019. Source: DatiItalia, ISTAT data.