Family was one of the words most used by Giorgia Meloni before and after arriving at Palazzo Chigi. But how much has your government really invested in helping those who have children and, above all, those who would like to have them? According to the Presidency of the Council – between 2022 and 2026 – the measures attributable to the chapter “Support for the family and birth rate” are worth a total of 13.794 billion euros, but among the family policies the government includes a bit of everything. First of all, the billions allocated against high bill prices.
Certainly aid that has helped families, but not specific to supporting the birth rate. If from the total claimed by Palazzo Chigi we instead limit ourselves to the category that the government itself calls “support for birth rates and parenthood”, we arrive at 7.9 billion. And the demographic result, at least for now, continues to go in the opposite direction compared to the declared objectives.
As of 2022, 393,333 children had been born. In 2025, births fell to around 355 thousand: almost 38 thousand less, equal to a reduction of close to 10% in three years. The average number of children per woman simultaneously plummeted to 1.14, a new historic low.
Of course, it would not be correct to automatically attribute this decline to the policies of the current government. Demographic dynamics also depend on the reduction in the number of women of childbearing age, job insecurity, the increasingly higher age at the birth of the first child, housing conditions and social transformations that come from afar.
Where did the money go?
The largest part of the interventions launched by the government – single allowance, nursery bonuses, bonuses for mothers, bonuses for new births, funds for summer centers and incentives for the employment of mothers – has passed through monetary transfers, bonuses and contribution relief.
The weak point is the services. For nursery schools, the Pnrr provided for 264,480 new places in the entire 0-6 year old system. With the revision presented by the Meloni government and approved at European level at the end of 2023, the target was reduced to 150,480 places. And the Parliamentary Budget Office has indicated that up to 35,000 places could replace existing structures, rather than representing a net increase in supply.
Equal leave was also rejected: the text brought to Parliament by the opposition wanted to increase the father’s compulsory leave from the current ten days to four months, adding a further optional month, and to arrive at full pay for the maternity and paternity periods involved in the reform.
How much Italy spends compared to Europe
The center-right’s common program for 2022 explicitly promised the alignment of public spending on children and families with the European average, together with free nursery schools, an increase in the single allowance and the progressive introduction of the family quotient. But according to Eurostat, Italy spends around 1.63% of GDP on “family and children” when France is around 2.25%, Germany at 3.54% and Poland at 3.72%.
But it’s not just how much, the most interesting data concerns how resources are used. In 2023, in the European Union, 58.8% of spending on family and children was made up of periodic monetary transfers, while 39.1% went to benefits and services in kind. Child care – nurseries and other services – alone accounted for a quarter of European spending for this function.
Italy is much more biased towards monetary aid. It is a fundamental difference: an allowance increases a family’s disposable income, while an accessible nursery, better shared leave or an educational service directly reduce the economic and professional cost of having a child.
It’s not just the bonuses
Other countries also use very generous monetary transfers, but they are combined with fiscal instruments. And taxation is one of the big absentees from the Italian program for 2022: the center-right had promised a “progressive introduction of the family quotient”, but after four budget laws an organic reform of this type has not arrived.
The point is important because the actual family quotient, on the French model, changes the unit on which the tax is calculated: the overall income of the family is considered, it is divided by a number of “shares” attributed to the members and tax progressivity is applied to the income thus obtained. In Italy, Irpef continues to be calculated individually on the income of the individual taxpayer. The Meloni government has so far only implemented some partial mechanisms that take into account the composition of the family. In particular, since 2025 the government has introduced a coefficient in the Irpef linked to the number of children, but only to determine the maximum ceiling for some deductible expenses of taxpayers with incomes exceeding 75 thousand euros. In practice, with the same income, families with more children can retain greater deductions. The tax reform that would have given families relief still remains unfinished.