Italy on track to lose over 20 percent of population by 2080

Italy is on track to lose more than 20 percent of its population by 2080, a demographic decline that is reshaping the country's social and economic fabric, according to a roundup published by The Local Italy on Tuesday. The projection, based on national statistics, points to a future in which the country's ageing population and persistently low birth rates combine to shrink communities across the peninsula.

The figures underscore a crisis that is felt most acutely in the inner Apennines, where emigration of the young has been a constant for decades. Abruzzo's highland villages, already thinned by the 2009 earthquake and the slow retreat of traditional livelihoods, are among the areas most exposed to the trend.