After the Second World War, population in Europe grew at a sustained pace, with the largest increases in the early sixties and early seventies. In 1980, a phase began in which Italy’s population remained almost stable, which clearly distanced >read more
our country from European aggregates. Only at the beginning of the new millennium, the growth of the Italian population resumed at a rapid pace, especially for the contribution of foreign immigrants, and the gap with the European aggregates reduced again. This process, however, stopped with the Great Recession begun in 2008 when the Italian population stagnated until, for the first time since unification, in 2015, it decreased.
Historically, the postwar period was characterized by a decreasing trend in births, both in Italy and in Europe. In Italy, the years of economic boom were an exception, and in 1964, births hit a peak. The same trend was observed >read more
in all European countries, with the exception of the six founders who were in a more advanced stage of the "demographic transition". After that year, births declined progressively throughout Europe. Since the mid-1980s, the birth rate stabilized in Italy and, with some oscillation, in European aggregates. Even in this case, the onset of the crisis caused a gradual decline in births, much more marked in Italy than in the rest of Europe.
Contrary to a rooted belief, the number of children per woman in Italy was below European values until the mid-sixties. Despite a widespread decline started on that date, the total fertility rate >read more
remained above 2 children per woman until the mid-1970s. In the 1990s, the lowest levels were reached: 1.22 children for Italy, 1.47 for the Eu, 1.44 for the Eu6. Since early 2000s, there has been an increase for all the aggregates considered, mostly due to the foreign component.
The average age of women at childbirth in Italy is structurally higher than that observed in European aggregates by a margin between six months and two years. As far as trends are concerned, the observation period can easily >read more
be subdivided into sub-periods: in the first period - between 1950 and 1980 - age decreases; in the second one it grows rapidly, also due to a general postponement of the various stages of transition to adult life. This trend upwards is also confirmed by projections.
Although the improvement in life expectancy at birth was a common trend in all developed countries, until the early seventies, Italy’s values remained below those reported in the Eu6 and Eu as a >read more
whole. Since then, life expectancy in Italy has consistently been higher than that of European aggregates. Ours is one of the most long-lived countries, within a continent, however, characterized by very high values.
As a result of rising life expectancy and slowing births, the European population started aging. Italy, which in the 1950s was among the youngest European countries, aged more and >read more
more rapidlythan others. If in 1957 half of the Italian population was under 31, now it is over 45. In sixty years, therefore, the centre of gravity of the Italian population moved by over 15 years. A similar phenomenon affected, albeit to a lesser extent, the European aggregates, where the displacement was of 11 years: from 33 to 44 years in the Eu6 and from 32 to 43 in the whole of the Eu.
The scenario that emerged in Europe at the beginning of the sixties was that of an aging population. In Italy, the young dependency ratio - the percentage of young people up to 14 years old - after remaining stable at 37-38 percent >read more
until the late 1970s, dropped very rapidly until 1992, stabilizing from then on at around 21-22 percent. The gap with the European aggregates - which also followed a substantially similar trend - remained of 2 years, at our disadvantage. The elderly population, including people aged 65 and over, followed an opposite trend: it was stable at about 14 percent of the Italian population in 1960 and reached 34.2 percent in 2016. The phenomenon was common to all Europe, but less accentuated in Eu6 and even less in the Eu28.
Italy has historically been a country of emigration, and until the early 1970s the number of emigrants exceeded that of immigrants. It followed a long period of stasis, in which >read more
inflows and outflows offset each other and stabilized at rather low values. From 1991, Italy became a country of immigration, but the phenomenon, which grew until 2007, then slowed down considerably due to the Great Recession.
