In a country that stops having children, Giugliano runs a surplus
Italy's largest natural population surplus sits in Naples's hinterland. Milan, the same year, buries 4,342 more people than it delivers.
In Italy more people die than are born. Except in one corner of Campania
In 2025 the average Italian town recorded 45 births and 83 deaths. The balance is in the red almost everywhere. Almost.
In Giugliano in Campania, in the hinterland north of Naples, there were 1,078 births and 882 deaths: 196 more births than deaths. It is the largest natural surplus in the country, ahead of any northern city. Istat has just released its monthly demographic balance for April 2026, and the familiar wave of "demographic winter" headlines starts again. But the year-on-year count says something sharper than the usual story: the places still holding up are holding up where nobody thinks to look.
The towns with more births than deaths (2025)
Natural balance (births minus deaths). Source: DatiItalia — analysis of Istat data
Behind Giugliano, a cluster near Caserta
Next after Giugliano comes Orta di Atella, in the province of Caserta, with 136 more births than deaths: 254 against 118. Then Gricignano di Aversa (+89), Quarto (+87), Trentola Ducenta (+82). A tight cluster in the Agro Aversano and the Naples belt, the youngest and most crowded stretch of the South — the very area that talk of a depopulating Mezzogiorno leaves out.
At the other end stand the cities everyone pictures as full of life. In 2025 Milan recorded 9,297 births against 13,639 deaths: 4,342 gaps opened in twelve months, the widest in the country. Bologna lost 2,001 (2,427 births, 4,428 deaths), Florence 2,085 (2,123 against 4,208). The city that generates the most wealth is the one ageing fastest.
Where the most children are born: birth rate (2025)
Births per thousand residents, towns above one thousand people. Source: DatiItalia — analysis of Istat data
High birth rates and an ageing country, on the same map
The highest birth rate among towns above one thousand residents is in Rodengo, in South Tyrol: 20.3 births per thousand residents. Just behind comes San Costantino Calabro, in Calabria, at 15.8, and further down Scala, on the Amalfi coast, at 13.3. The geography of births does not follow a clean north–south line: it follows the places where young families stay.
It is the mirror image of the country ageing fastest. In Farini, in the Piacenza Apennines, the old-age index reaches 1,053.2: more than ten older people for every child. There the natural balance can only be negative, whatever month Istat measures. Milan buries 4,342 more people than it delivers and remains the richest city; Giugliano brings 196 more into the world than it loses, and never makes the front page.