Average age 50 years and 34% of the population elderly: this is how Italy will be in 2050

A depopulating country, older and with fewer children. This is the Italy of tomorrow according to ISTAT forecasts. The resident population is decreasing and in 2050 it is estimated that there will be more than four million fewer residents. In particular, there will be a decrease from about 59 million on 1 January 2023 to 58.6 million in 2030, to 54.8 in 2050 and 46.1 million in 2080. The progressive depopulation will affect the whole territory, but with differences between the North, the Centre and the South where the decline will be more substantial. In the South, the population could shrink by 7.9 million in 2080, 3.4 million of them already by 2050.

In the transition that will take the population from the current 59 million residents to around 46 million in 2080, there are an estimated 21 million births, 44.4 million deaths, 18.2 million immigrations from abroad and 8 million emigrations. Future migration flows - according to ISTAT - do not counterbalance the negative sign of the natural dynamic. The imbalance between old and new generations will also grow. In 2050 the over-65s could account for 34.5% of the total (today they are 14%) and the over-85s could rise from 3.8% in 2023 to 7.2%, with fluctuation margins.

Whatever happens," it is explained, "the impact on social protection policies will be important, as they will have to cope with the needs of an increasing share of the elderly. The ratio between people of working age (15-64) and non-working age (0-14 and over 65) will go from three to two in 2023 to about one to one in 2050. In the Mezzogiorno there will be a faster ageing process, with an average age of 51.5 years by 2050 compared to 50.8 nationally.

And families will also change their skin. In 20 years there will be almost a million more of them, but more fragmented. There will be smaller and smaller households: the average number of members will fall from 2.25 in 2023 to 2.08 in 2043. Increasing life expectancy and marital instability mean that the number of people living alone, real 'micro-families', will grow by 15% overall, increasing from 9.3 million to 10.7 in 2043. Couples with children are also expected to decrease further. Today they account for almost three out of 10 families (29.8%) in 2043 they could drop to less than a quarter of the total (23.0%). And more than one in five families will have no children. A structural change that heralds an overtaking of the latter over the former in "the imminent future", which in some areas of the country could materialise in the near future. In the North, for example, it could happen from 2040 (in the North-East as early as 2037) while in the Centre the overtaking would take place in 2043.