How internal and international migrations have shaped the age structure of the Italian regions, 1955-2008

Italy is one of the oldest countries in the world: the percentage of population over 65 years of age (20.4%) is topped only by Germany (20.5%) and Japan (22.6%). Italy displays also remarkable regional differences in the ageing process: the percentage of population aged 65 and over varies between 26.7% (in one of the North-western regions, Liguria) and 16.2 (in Campania, one of the regions of southern Italy). The aim of our paper is to investigate the reasons for that variation. We use regional population register data from 1955 to 2008 to show that both national and international population movements affected regional ageing in different ways. Differently from other researches already done, we explicitly take into account not only the number of (Italian and international interregional) migrants, but also the effect of their fertility on the population structure. Empirically, we compare the observed population structure with those of populations projected according to different hypothesis about migrations. To illustrate the case, we use initially two regions: Liguria, the oldest region in Italy, and Campania, the youngest one. For both regions, it is evident that the ageing of the population is greatly influenced by the dynamics of Italians’ migration movements until 2005 - obviously in different directions - and less by foreigners’. From 2005 on in Liguria, differently than in Campania, foreigners’ migrations have started to influence population ageing