Demographics have been showing Italy has been getting older for quite a while. ISTAT, the Italian National Institute for Statistics, recently confirmed 2015 has been the year with the lowest natality rate since the Unification. That was in 1861, for those not too informed on Italian history. Only 488.000 baby Italians were born last year, 15.000 less than in 2014. The average age increased to 44.6 years. Italians over 65 are 13.4 millions, that is, 22% of the entire population.
2015 has also been a year filled with deaths: 9.1% more than in 2014. This has caused the notoriously high Italian life expectancy to drop slightly: 80.1 years for men (it was 80.3 in 2014), 84.7 for women (85 in 2014). Mind, in spite of this light diminution, Italy remains one of the countries with the best life expectancy in the world: according to the WHO, Italy rests happily at number 2 (along with a bunch of other countries like Spain, Singapore and Australia).
