Population Changes in Italy

The population of Italy in 2006 was 58,133,509, an increase of about 12 million since 1951 and of 26.5 million since 1901. As younger people became more urbanized and literate, the national birthrate dropped sharply. In 2006 it was only 9 per 1,000 persons, compared with 19.2 in 1965, 24.9 in 1931, and 31.4 in 1911. The death rate has also fallen sharply, from 30.3 per 1,000 in 1861 to 10 in 2006. There were more deaths than births in the industrial northwest by 1979, and nationwide by 1993. Average life expectancy in the early 2000s was 77 years for males and 83 for females. Women outnumbered men by about 1.8 million.

In 2006 the average density of population was 499 per square mile (193 per sq km), a very high figure if one considers the mountainous terrain of much of Italy. The greatest density is found in the "industrial triangle" bounded by Milan, Turin, and Genoa. One-third of Italy's population is concentrated in metropolitan areas that cover only 4% of the nation's surface. 

Three cities claim more than a million people: Rome (in excess of 2.6 million), Milan, and Naples. The rapid industrial expansion in these and other cities between 1951 and 1971 attracted almost 2 million migrants from the rural south. In Milan alone, newcomers were arriving at the rate of 36,000 a year in the mid-1960s. This influx created vast problems in the areas of housing, crime, and cultural readjustment. 

A great wave of Italian emigration began in the 1870s, when cheap steamship transportation was available to the Americas. Remittances by emigrants to their families at home constituted an important item in Italy's balance of trade. By 1914 the number of Italians who had decided to remain overseas permanently was about 5 million. Emigration resumed after World War I, with some 600,000 leaving in 1920 alone, not just to the Western Hemisphere but also, for shorter terms, to France and Belgium. Immigration restrictions by the United States and other countries soon cut Italy's outflow to less than 300,000 a year, and the figure was later reduced to about 100,000 by curbs imposed by the Fascists. 

After World War II, emigration rose again, averaging 150,000 a year between 1948 and 1955. Thereafter, rising prosperity at home and Italy's entry into the European Economic Community (European Union) modified the pattern. Instead of going overseas, most Italians preferred short-term employment in industrialized countries such as Germany and Switzerland. The peak postwar year was 1962, when 315,795 departed, most of them unmarried men from the south. In 1995 there were 43,303 emigrants, more than two-thirds of them going elsewhere in Europe.

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