More proof that overpopulation was a myth.

The Black Death was traced to infected rats aboard a merchant ship from the Crimea that stopped in Sicily. The diseases carried by those rats ravaged not only Italy but all of Europe. The loss of life ranged from 12 percent in a city or region to the 70 percent reported in Siena. “No one wept for the dead,” wrote a denizen of the devastated city, “because everyone expected death himself.”

Today, a visitor to Italy is struck by the fact that demographic destruction is occurring once again, though this time more slowly. There is no Black Death, no communicable disease that the destruction can be blamed on. But the fact is that Italy is depopulating itself, and it is doing so by human choice. Procreation, you could say, is suffering. Simply put, Italians are having very few babies–actually, too few for Italy to survive.

Italy now has the lowest birthrate (1.23 children per woman) in Europe and the second lowest in the world. If Italy’s “rate of reproduction continues,” London’s Sunday Telegraph recently noted, “Italians will slowly but surely die out.”