[GTranslate]ROME – The latest report from Istat, the Italian National Statistical Institute, is like a war bulletin: 384 thousand fewer people, “as if there were no Florence” explains the Institute, with the highest number of deaths after World War II and the collapse of marriages and births. The pandemic has had devastating effects.

“The demographic picture of our country – explains Istat in the report published today (https://www.istat.it/en/) – has undergone a profound change due to the impact that the number of deaths from Covid has produced both in quantitative and geographical terms. In 2020, deaths in total amounted to 746,146, the highest number ever recorded since the Second World War, with an increase compared to the 2015-2019 average of over 100 thousand units (+ 15.6%). first wave of the epidemic (March-May 2020) deaths nationwide were 211,750, almost 51,000 more than the average for the same period of the previous 5 years (+ 31.7%). Of these, deaths of positive people at Covid-19 recorded by the integrated surveillance amounted to 34,079 (67% of the total excess) “. The increase in deaths, Istat notes, “was concentrated in the northern regions, where they reached peaks of 95% in March and 75% in April”.

And if deaths increase, marriages and births collapse. “The observation of the data of marriages and civil unions celebrated in Italian municipalities during 2020 – explains Istat – reveals a significant drop: marriages, already down in 2019, are reduced by 47.5% in comparison with the previous year, settling at 96,687. Mostly religious marriages are decreasing (-68.1%) but civil marriages also register a loss of almost 29%. In the transition phase (June-September 2020) – adds Istat – with the simultaneous reopening of all commercial activities and movements on the national territory, there is no significant recovery of marriages postponed due to the lockdown “.

And the geography of births shows a general decline in all areas, greater in the North-West (-4.6%) and in the South (-4.0%). Birth rates place the autonomous province of Bolzano in first place with 9.6 births per thousand inhabitants and Sardinia at the last with 5.1 per thousand. “In all the months of 2020 there are percentage values ​​lower than those of the same period of 2019, with the exception of February with 4.5% more, partly due to the extra day in the 2020 calendar. The drop in births – he explains Istat is accentuated in the months of November and especially in December (-10.3%), the first month in which any effects of the first epidemic wave can be observed “. And this is the negative record of births since the Unification of Italy, already recorded in 2019 and again exceeded in 2020. There were just 404,104 registered in the registry by birth, almost 16 thousand less than in 2019 (-3.8%).

Fewer births and more deaths from the pandemic, therefore. A sad combination that has led to the decline of the population in Italy of 384 thousand people. And arrivals from abroad don’t help either. During 2020 there are a total of 1,586,292 registrations in the registry office and 1,628,172 cancellations. By comparing the trend of migration flows into the four phases into which 2020 can be conventionally divided (pre-Covid, first wave, transition phase, second wave) with the average of the corresponding periods of the years 2015-2019, significant variations emerge in particular for international migratory movements. Registrations from abroad (220,533 in 2020), already down in 2019 for the foreign component, show a decrease in the first two months of the year (-8.8%) and then collapse during the first wave (-66 , 3%) and recovered slightly (but always with a negative variation) during the year (-23.3% in the transition phase and -18.2% in the second wave).