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Italian Population Remains Stable, but Shift From City Centers:Istat

Posted on: Friday, 9 July 2004, 06:00 CDT

Italian population remains stable, but shift from city centers: Istat

ROME, July 8 (Xinhua) -- While the size of the Italian population has remained stable over the last 10 years, there has been an increasing shift away from large city centers, Italian national statistics institute Istat said Thursday.

Commenting on data from the 2001 census, the latest figure available, Istat said in a report that the population had increased less than 0.5 percent since 1991, up from 56,778,031 to 56,995,744.

The number of Italians living in major centers had fallen nationwide. Only the Sicilian city of Messina reported an increase in the size of its population, which rose 8.8 percent.

The number of Italian families has risen over the last 10 years but the number of people in each family has fallen.

Between 1991 and 2001, the number of families rose by almost 20 percent to 21.8 million while the average number of people in a family fell from 2.8 to 2.6, the report said.

In line with tradition, the biggest families were to be found in the south. In Naples, Bari and Palermo the percentage of households with children was over 60 percent while in Bologna was only 41.7 percent.

By contrast, the north was found to have the highest percentage of one-person households, 36.4 percent in Milan, 34.5 percent in Bologna and 33.9 percent in Turin, the Istat said.

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