Too busy hunting boar, making wine or playing soccer to settle down, the aging bachelors of a dying Italian village have been catapulted to infamy by their mayor's ultimatum: Marry or pay a singles' tax.

Vastogirardi, founded almost 2,000 years ago on a mountain in southern Italy, will soon cease to exist unless its citizens start having children, Mayor Vincenzo Venditti said.

In the latest symptom of a demographic time bomb that church and state have been powerless to defuse, the mayor has declared war on the self-sufficient old boys who cluster in bars every night and return to empty homes.

Venditti intends to levy a tax on the 50 men and 20 women who show no desire to marry or have children despite prominently advertised government aid to families.

"We are reaching the point of no return. When the school dies, society dies," he said. Funerals in the village outnumber weddings by 3 to 1. There is no secondary school, not enough children to fill the primary school and the kindergarten will close within three years unless more babies are born.

One was born last year, none this year.

In three decades, the population has shriveled from more than 3,000 to 823. Once famed for its delicate, handmade mozzarella cheese, Vastogirardi no longer has a bank, plumber, shoemaker or priest.

But for the bachelors, life is sweet. Hunting, fishing, a soccer field, three bars and wine-making fill their free time. Some of them have been engaged to the same woman for 20 years.

"It suits us," said Antonio Bisciotti, 29, sitting in the Bar Central with friends. "We're lazy. We like our lives."

The bachelors are not intimidated by the proposed tax; it would most likely be declared unconstitutional. But the proposal has hit a nerve in a country where the average birthrate of 1.2 children per woman is the lowest in the world.

Many bachelors are part of Italy's army of so-called mammoni, grown-up sons who never leave their mothers and the comforts of home. The phenomenon carries no stigma in Italy.

Like their male counterparts, the village's new generation of educated, career-driven women are in no rush to bag partners. Vincenza Marracino, 43, returned 16 years ago after studying in Rome to build the village's only pharmacy. A family would come second, if at all.

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GeoActive 230 Ageing Populations