Maybe it was the stress. Maybe it was being cooped up with the mother-in-law. But the numbers are in, and one effect of the coronavirus lockdown is now clear: people made fewer babies. A lot fewer babies.

Births in Italy in December — exactly nine months after the country went into Europe’s first lockdown — plunged by a whopping 21.6 per cent, according to figures from a sample of 15 Italian cities released this week by statistics agency, ISTAT, according to Reuters.

And the impact is far from over. Marriages fell by more than half in the first 10 months of last year, which ISTAT chief Gian Carlo Blangiardo called “a further factor in a probable decline in births in the immediate future”.

Demographics experts have been predicting a baby bust across Europe for 2021, as the impact of last year’s lockdowns is felt.