\n<\/p>\n
The Italian \u201cdemographic winter\u201d has a number of causes, but rising male biological infertility is not one (A child is born: Italians celebrate village\u2019s first baby in 30 years, 26 December).<\/p>\n
A\u00a0lot of worry about falling sperm counts has been generated by some studies, but a more recent meta\u2011analysis found, through inclusion of regional controls, an increase <\/em>in US sperm counts between 1970 and 2018. Sperm counts may be falling in places like the Chinese province of Henan, which has substantial air and water\u00a0pollution, but there is limited evidence that sperm counts are falling in the developed world.<\/p>\n In 2024, the Pew Research Center asked women and men over 50 who never had children why they hadn\u2019t. Around a third (31%) didn\u2019t want them, but more prolific reasons included \u201cit just never happened\u201d (39%) and \u201cdidn\u2019t find the right partner\u201d (33%). Since 1980, the Italian maternity rate has fallen from 77% to 60%, accounting for 77% of the fall in the Italian fertility rate over that period (calculated using a microdemographic framework and Istat fertility data). The demographic winter is primarily driven by a decline in people becoming parents, which is\u00a0primarily driven by life milestones, including romantic ones, not being met in time. Have an opinion on anything you\u2019ve read in the Guardian today? Please <\/em><\/strong>email<\/em><\/strong> us your letter and it will be considered for publication in our <\/em><\/strong>letters<\/em><\/strong> section.<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" The Italian \u201cdemographic winter\u201d has a number of causes, but rising male biological infertility is not one (A child is born: Italians celebrate village\u2019s first baby in 30 years, 26 December). A\u00a0lot of worry about falling sperm counts has been generated by some studies, but a more recent meta\u2011analysis found, through inclusion of regional controls,<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":39918,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58],"tags":[21565,11248,21564,2196,10646,8310],"class_list":{"0":"post-39917","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-science","8":"tag-demographic","9":"tag-fertility","10":"tag-italys","11":"tag-problems","12":"tag-reason","13":"tag-winter"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39917","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=39917"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/39917\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39918"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=39917"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=39917"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/naijaglobalnews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=39917"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
Peter Foreshaw Brookes<\/strong>
Director, <\/em>The Centre for Family and\u00a0Education<\/em><\/p>\n