by Robert Ossenblok, Voice Of Europe:

From Glory to Despair
Italy. One of the oldest civilized territories on the European continent. In a distant past, Rome dominated Europe. Its cities flourished and were full of life.

Nowadays, Italy’s villages are drained. The young move into the cities or seek a brighter future abroad. The few that stay simply don’t have enough children to maintain the population. The Mayor of one of these small towns, Domenico Lucano, found an interesting solution to this depopulation problem. His village, Riace, invited migrants to rejuvenate the town.

Currently about a quarter of the two thousand inhabitants are migrants, primarily from Africa and Asia. The native Italians that still live there are mostly the elderly. The Guardian states the town has ”secured its own future”.

Although most easily visible in the small villages, it is a trend taking place on the national level.

Italy’s Population
To understand change, we must first understand the present. Italy has a population of just over 60 million, a number that has been fairly stable over the last decade. In recent years, since 2015, Italy’s population is shrinking slightly.

That stability in population size is due to immigrants filling in the gaps. Italy’s fertility rate is far below the replacement rate of 2.1, sitting at 1.37. The overall population has an average age of 44.9 years and nearly one in four Italians is over the age of 65. Japan is the only country in the world with a higher percentage of 65 or older.

For comparison, Italy’s previous colony of Ethiopia has an average age of 17.6 years. Although Ethiopia’s fertility rate has decreased as well, it is still sitting at a massive 4.6 children per woman. Enough to double the size of the next generation.

Rather than doubling its population size, Italy’s fertility rate results in every generation being a third smaller than the last. Every new generation will be 30% smaller than the previous. A generation of 10 million Italians today, will have a total of 6.85 million children. They will have 4.7 million grandchildren and just over 3 million great-grandchildren.

With a fertility rate of 1.37, within four generations 10 million has turned into 3 million.

Italy has not seen such a decline in its population since the Black Plague ravaged its lands. The only difference is that this time, rather than people dying, they were never born in the first place.

The Emigrants
There are 5.4 million Italians living abroad, over 1.5 million of which have moved abroad since the economic crisis of 2008. The total now represents nearly 10% of the total inhabitants of Italy, and a disproportionate amount of young people.

Despite a recent growth in the Italian economy, its relatively high unemployment is pushing away the young and desperate. The unemployment rate in Italy sits at 10.8%, with a youth unemployment of over 30%.

Easy migration within the EU has led many Italians to seek a brighter and more prosperous future abroad. The elderly are the ones that remain.

In a country that is already out of balance due to the lack of babies being born, the emigration further contributes to the population decline.

The Immigrants
In 2002 the total number of foreign nationals living in Italy numbered over 1 million. Since 2015 there are over 5 million foreign nationals, approaching 10% of the total population. Foreign nationals excludes those that acquired Italian citizenship, as well as illegal immigrants.

It is worth noting that half of the foreign nationals come from other European countries, notably Romania. Around half of the Europeans are from non-EU countries like Albania and the Ukraine. The other half come primarily from Africa and Asia.

The inflow of non-EU citizens into Italy in 2016 alone amounted to 226.000. The majority of these came as family reunification (45%), with the second most prominent reason being humanitarian reasons and asylum (34%). Only 5.8% gave the reason of work to move to Italy.

Out of the foreign nationals, 185.000 acquired Italian citizenship in 2016 and thereby ceased to belong to the category of foreign nationals. From then onward they will be counted as part of the regular Italian population. The 185.000 consisted primarily of Moroccans and Albanians, as well as significant amounts of Indians, Bangladeshi and Pakistani.

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