Everything about Elon Musk is BIG. This includes his personality, his fortune, and his family. Musk is the father of 10 children.
Now it seems that he has developed a virtual obsession about Italy’s shrinking population and he wishes that the rapidly aging country would follow his example and produce kids! Lots of them.
According to recent reports, this situation worries him and he talks about it regularly, raising warnings in the hope that someone will take notice. But so far, no one is listening to his cries of despair.
For several months Musk, the CEO of Tesla, has been using his influence to draw the world’s attention to the rapid decline of the population in Italy. Last month, for example, he took advantage of a message from cybersecurity researcher Andrea Stroppa to reaffirm that the problem was becoming very serious.
“New official data: Italy’s population continues to collapse,” Stroppa posted on March 21. “The population declined by 0.3% or 179,000 units over the previous year, according to the national statistics institute. The birth rate in 2022 fell by 1.9%.”
Musk, who has since been warning about the decline in birth rates in major countries, did not hesitate to comment and sounded the alarm.
“Very concerning,” the billionaire said.
Italy is facing a double whammy, according to demographic experts and official data. The number of elderly people is rapidly increasing while the birth rate has slumped. These factors make Italy the western country with the fastest population decline.
The number of births in Italy fell in 2020 to its lowest level since the country’s unification in 1861, according to ISTAT, the Italian National Institute of Statistics. This was the12th consecutive year of decline. The average number of children per woman residing in Italy was 1.24 in 2020, one of the lowest fertility rates in the world.
Musk seems to think that Italy has reached a point of no return and is making a grim prediction: “Italy is disappearing!” Musk commented.
The Techno King, as he is known at Tesla, believes that strong incentives must be given to families to encourage young people to have children. He also bucks the conventional wisdom that it is the cost of living that discourages some people from having children.
“Contrary to what many think, the richer someone is, the fewer kids they have,” the serial entrepreneur argued last May. “I am a rare exception. Most people I know have zero or one kid.”
For him, to solve the collapse of the population, which he describes as “the biggest threat to civilization,” we must start by viewing having children in a positive way.
“We just need to celebrate having kids,” he has said.
