Italian Town Where the Mayor Pays You to Have a Baby

High in Italy's Apennine hills, a white-haired pensioner sits alone on a bench watching autumn leaves blow down a deserted street. Not much else moves, the games machines are switched off in the empty village bar and there is hardly a sound. No one in the town square, no children on bikes or in prams.

This small village, 93 miles (150km) south-east of Naples, is running so short of children that its mayor is offering €10,000 (£6,863) to anyone who produces one.

'It's like truffles and mushrooms,' said the mayor, Rocco Falivena, Italian and European flags drooping in a corner behind his desk. 'This year has been very dry so there are hardly any of these delicacies. You have to pay through the nose to get them.'

In Laviano, like surrounding villages, houses stand empty while the cemetery is full. Last year, only eight babies were born in a population of 1,850. Young couples are constantly drifting north in search of work.

'We need to drum up enough children to make a class. Otherwise the school will have to close,' said the mayor.

'This cash incentive is the only thing I could think of. If it works, we'll be saved, even though we'll be broke.'

He believes the 'baby bonus' is the most important investment the village can make; Falivena hopes to increase births by at least 50 per cent in the next four years.

While experts warn ageing populations and decreasing birthrates mean 'Europe as we know it is dying,' Italy is leading the way. It has the lowest birthrate in Europe and Italians spend more on their children than any other European nation. Young couples struggle to find a good job faced with rocketing prices and peer pressure to dress their children in designer clothes. Procreating has become a luxury many Italians cannot afford.

'I am all for this,' said Don Giuseppe Zocca, Laviano's village priest. He beams at the prospect he might soon get to use the piles of traditional baptism gifts that have been collecting dust in a back room for years. 'It's not as if anyone will start making babies just to have the cash,' he said. 'But it will certainly help.'

So far, seven Laviano couples have cashed in on the baby bonus introduced last February, and the local carabinieri chief, Nicola Malanga, whose own son Nicholas was born three months ago, has noticed 'quite a lot of people are pregnant at the moment'.

'Something has to be done to get the production line moving again. Otherwise this town is heading for extinction, just like so many others,' he said, cooing over his high-earning baby.

'In a way, it's easy getting people to be born here. The problem is how to keep them around until they die,' said Falivena.

Since the cash-for-babies scheme was introduced, Don Zocca's phone has not stopped ringing as pregnant couples in nearby towns toy with the idea of changing their residence to scoop the baby bonus. 'I'll tell my wife,' laughed Vincenzo Barra, a Naples taxi driver. 'We might as well move before the next baby comes along.'

Just in case anyone plots a flying visit to pick up the cheque, the €10,000 bonus has been staggered in instalments over six years, until the child starts elementary school.

'Mussolini urged Italians to have babies last century because he wanted to conquer Europe. The Romans used to kidnap village girls and use them to populate Rome,' said sociologist Franco Ferrarotti.

'There has always been this idea that the more Italians there are around the better. The difference this time is that we are not talking about conquering anything, it's just a question of survival.'

Before the Second World War, this Catholic land produced more babies than any other Western European country and extended families of 25 people chattered around kitchen tables. Laviano's mayor himself had 15 uncles and aunts.

But in wealthier, industrialised postwar Italy, the brakes are on and experts explain 'everyone is stretching things out'.

'Everything is on hold,' said Valerio Terra Abrami a demographer at Italy's national statistics institute. 'People are waiting to find a job, to leave home, to get married. Sometimes things drag on for so long that women are too old to have children.'

Experts predict that Italy's population will fall by 15 million by 2050 and would be shrinking already were it not for the immigrant population keeping figures up.

From next year the state is offering a cash bonus for every second child. Experts warn this may produce a flurry of 'activity' but cash rewards are unlikely to reverse the 'birth dearth' problem.