Italy, Spain and Germany now have some of the the lowest birth-rates in the industrialised world with more people dying than being born.

It is a looming demographic and employment disaster with huge implications for national budgets.

This will be one of the issues raised as European Union leaders gather in the Swedish city of Stockholm to plot employment policy and economic reform.

The Swedish presidency of the European Union thinks one of the solutions is to make it easier for men and women to combine work and family life by pushing for more family friendly policies across the Europe Union.

Italy in crisis

Italy already has the lowest birth-rate in Europe and in the city of Bologna it is on course to hit a world record.

The city's most famous landmark - the fountain of the sea god Neptune surrounded by comely water nymphs - is an ode to Italian womanhood, fertile and motherly.



Unless you have family who can help, combining family and work is very difficult

Cynthia Palozzi, insurance clerk

During the Renaissance they set the image down in stone but Bologna's women are turning their backs on the myth and having fewer children here than anywhere else in Italy. Cynthia Palozzi, 35, an insurance clerk who lives with her boyfriend, is typical of the women who are choosing not to have children. "There are too few nursery schools, especially in Bologna, so, unless you have family who can help, combining family and work is very difficult." While in many parts of the world a low birth rate is a highly cherished goal, in Italy is cause for alarm: the population is forecast to fall by nearly a third over the next fifty years. Italians have now been instructed by the Pope to "rediscover the culture of life and love and... their mission as parents". But raising a family these days might need a little more concrete support. Practical help Bologna's regional government is running a special project to provide more choices for women. It is an idea now being tried by a number of other Italian cities in the hope that offering more support for mothers will encourage them to have more children.



