Published by Global Banking and Finance Review
Posted on July 28, 2025
2 min readLast updated: January 22, 2026
Italy's working age population is expected to shrink by over 20% by 2050, highlighting severe demographic challenges. The birth rate is at a record low, posing economic threats.
ROME (Reuters) -Italy's working age population is set to shrink by more than a fifth over the next 25 years, national statistics agency Istat said on Monday, highlighting the country's severe demographic challenges.
Italy is battling with a falling birth rate and a shrinking population. Last year new births dropped to a record low of around 370,000, and the population fell by 37,000 to 58.93 million, continuing a decade-long trend.
In its latest demographic forecast, Istat predicted that the number of people in the 15-64 age group would fall from 37.4 million in 2024 to 29.7 million in 2050, with their share of the total resident population falling to 54.3% from 63.5%.
In the same period, the percentage of residents over the age of 65 is projected to rise to 34.6% of the total, from 24.3% currently, and the share of children up to the age of 14 to fall to 11.2% from 12.2%.
Italy's long-declining birth rate is considered a national emergency. But despite Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni and her predecessors' pledges to tackle the issues, no one has so far been able to halt the drop.
Istat estimated on Monday that Italy's resident population would fall to 54.7 million by 2050, although it added that its forecast had a large margin of variability and uncertainty linked to migration trends.
In a report last year, Scope Ratings said Italy's demographics were the worst in Europe in terms of economic growth potential between 2023 and 2040, with a rapidly ageing population posing a threat to strained public finances.
(Reporting by Antonella Cinelli. Editing by Alvise Armellini and Mark Potter)
Demographic decline occurs when a population decreases due to factors such as low birth rates, high mortality rates, or emigration, leading to a shrinking workforce.
Economic growth is the increase in the production of goods and services in an economy over time, often measured by GDP.
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