Episode Details

Luca: Happy Saturday everyone, and welcome back to the Magic Towns Italy podcast with Luca, and most importantly, Anna.

Anna: Yes, ciao a tutti. Hi everyone. Today we’re diving into some fascinating new findings from a demographic study, Magic Towns Italy conducted using data from 2019 to 2025.

We’ll talk about which towns are growing or shrinking, how well they keep young people, and how much pressure they are under from aging populations. So if you’re a retiree or an expat thinking of relocating here, this is definitely for you.

Luca: Exactly. So we analyzed detailed population data for over 7,500 Italian towns.

And, uh, before you tune onto another [00:01:00] podcast, because you’re not a huge data fan, what we’re gonna be sharing with you are the implications of the study. Consider this for instance, that the idyllic village that you’re looking at could within 10 years turn into a place that doesn’t have a pharmacy, doesn’t have a doctor, or doesn’t have a supermarket.

This happens in Italy, so it’s worth looking out for this. Demographics make a huge difference as to whether a town thrives or fades. So if you’re looking for a place to live in Italy for the long run, you will want to look at the signs.

Anna: Yeah, I mean, nobody wants to move into a beautiful town, only to find out 10 years later that it’s become a ghost village. Let’s start with the big picture. What did the study look at?

Luca: We focused on three simple but very important questions. Number one, is the town growing or shrinking? Two, are young adults staying or leaving? And three, how quickly is [00:02:00] the population getting older.

Anna: and what are the key insights?

Luca: Let’s start with a sad fact, which is the most Italian towns are shrinking. In fact, across the towns we looked at the general trend is for a loss of, uh, about half a percentage point of population per year.

And only about a quarter of Italian towns are actually growing in population. That’s one in four. And if you look at it the other way around, it means that three out of four Italian towns are shrinking. The towns that are growing at disproportionately medium sized towns, imagine towns around 10 to 20,000 inhabitants, which are service centers or commuter towns rather than, uh, huge cities or tiny villages.

Anna: Oh, so three quarters are getting smaller. That is huge. So the typical little village we all imagine, chances are it’s quietly empty out. And the ones that are growing tend to be market towns or places within reach of cities, not the remote hilltop [00:03:00] hamlets.

Luca: Exactly. Now talking about youth retention, the ability to retain young people, we found that about 50% of towns are able to retain or attract young adults.

Unfortunately, the other half are losing the 20 somethings and the 30 somethings. And not surprisingly, larger towns and cities have an edge here, meaning that, uh, they’re more likely to attract young people for university or jobs.

Anna: It makes sense. Young adults often move to cities like Milan or Bologna for work or study, but yeah, it’s interesting that only half hang on to their youth.

If a place lose its young people, it’s basically losing its future, isn’t it?

Luca: Yeah. Sad but true. And the last part getting older. Aging. This is just a countrywide phenomenon. We saw that pretty much every town has an aging population getting older on average. Even those that attract some young [00:04:00] people.

And of course, and we’ve discussed this in several podcasts, the low birth rates across Italy mean that the overall popula