Elon Musk has a gripe: he fears that Italians could become extinct due to one of the lowest birth rates in the world. “Italy will have no more population if these trends continue,” said the Tesla boss and richest man in the world on Tuesday 24, who in the past had already warned about the dangers of global depopulation. He did so by responding to a tweet from Rome-based cybersecurity researcher Andrea Stroppa, who had posted a graph of demographic trends showing the declining birth rate for decades. The question and answer between Stroppa and Musk was posted below.
Istat: in Italy there is actually a birth rate problem
Last year Italy recorded its lowest birth rate ever with little more than one child per woman, according to the Italian Statistical Institute Istat, which renewed the birth rate alarm just a few days ago. This means that Italy counted seven newborns and twelve deaths per thousand inhabitants in 2021, Istat said. Although this is partly due to Covid mortality, Istat sees the country’s population decline by 20% by 2020: 12 million fewer people. Musk is not new to the topic of the low birth rate.
The low birth rate often at the center of Musk’s attention
“Most people believe we have too many people on the planet. This is an outdated view, “Musk said in 2019 at the World Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Shanghai, discussing with Alibaba’s then president, Jack Ma. The biggest problem the world will have to face in 20 years is a collapse of population, he added.
A concept reiterated in other recent comments on Twitter, such as one a few hours ago: “The birth rate in the United States has been below the minimum sustainable levels for about 50 years,” wrote Musk. Who, for his part, with eight children, seems to have adopted Gandhi’s principle: “Be the change you want to see in the world.”
