The world’s richest man is worried that Italians could become extinct due to one of the lowest birth rates in the world. “Italy will have no people if these trends continue,” the Tesla founder said. Elon Musk.
Musk's statement was in response to a tweet from Rome-based cybersecurity researcher Andrea Stroppa, who posted a graph of demographic trends showing the decline in birth rates over decades.
Last year, Italy registered its birth rate lowest ever, at just over one child per woman, according to Italian statistics institute Istat.
This means that Italy counted seven newborns and twelve deaths per thousand inhabitants in 2021, according to a survey by the o Istat. Although this is partly due to mortality from Covid-19, Istat sees the country's population falling by 20% by 2020 – that is, 12 million fewer people.
Since 2007, Italy has recorded more deaths than births, but the arrival of migrants managed to stabilize population numbers, something that has not been seen since the middle of the last decade.
“Most people believe we have too many people on the planet. This is an outdated view,” Musk said in 2019 at the World Artificial Intelligence Conference in Shanghai, debating with Alibaba Chairman Jack Ma.
Even the Pope has already warned about the low rates of birth rate in the European country. According to Francisco, “everyone needs to do everything possible to regain this awareness to overcome this demographic winter, something that goes against our families, against our homeland and also against our future”.
