The population decline in Italy accelerated further in the 2020 pandemic year.
As the Italian statistical office (Istat) announced in Rome, 405,275 children were born last year, 3.8 percent less than in 2019. The number of registered deaths rose by 17.6 percent compared to 2019 to 746,146.
Matthias Rüb
Political correspondent for Italy, the Vatican, Albania and Malta, based in Rome.
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More deaths in a calendar year were last recorded in 1944.
Since the trend of young people in particular continued to emigrate, the population fell last year by a total of around 405,000 to 59.2 million.
The number of births in Italy has been falling since 2014.
For this year, Istat expects 385,000 to 395,000 births, so that the population decline is likely to accelerate further.
Istat President Gian Carlo Blangiardo recently warned in the Milan business newspaper “Il Sole 24 Ore” that the number of inhabitants would halve in the coming decades if there is no sustainable trend reversal: “We are a people of potentially 32 million inhabitants - with everyone Consequences for the labor market, economic power and consumption. "
The average age of Italians rose from 45 to 45.4 in 2020. 51.3 percent of the Italian population are women, their number exceeds that of men by a good 1.5 million. In the past year, there were statistically 5.1 people over 65 years of age for every child under the age of six. The largest "overhang" of older people is in the north-western Italian coastal region of Liguria with statistically eight people over 65 years per child under six years.
In the northern Italian region of Trentino-Alto Adige, there are fewer than four seniors for one child under six years of age.
Ten years ago, an average of 3.8 people over 65 years of age had a child under six across the country; in 1971, the age cohorts under six and over 65 years of age were still roughly the same.
The 5.1 million foreign residents make up 8.7 percent of the population.
Most of the immigrant people come from Romania, Albania and Morocco.