Everyone’s on the move: a vibrant Italy that has every reason to be so

Changes of residence between municipalities (from one municipality to another, not the far more common moves within the same municipality) have always been regarded as a highly significant and telling indicator of social and economic vitality. A population that moves around, in terms of where it lives, is a vibrant population that has good reasons to be so. Over the last three years, these moves have been the highest on record: an average of 1,430,000 per year, compared with 1,250,000 per year in the first three years of the 2000s, representing an increase of more than 14 per cent. In 2022, with 1,471,000, and in 2025, with 1,455,000, the second and third best results on record were achieved respectively, after that of 2012, which was the best ever. Given that at least one in five of these changes of residence involve not only moving to a different municipality but also to a different region, and that these moves from one region to another consistently favour the direction from south to north – causing the south to lose inhabitants whilst the north gains them (over 50,000 a year) – residential moves between Italian municipalities are now such that they provide a clearer snapshot of the character of Italians today than many other social and demographic phenomena.

There are two reasons for this. The first is the ageing of the Italian population between the early 2000s and today. Having gone from an average age of not even 42 to over 47, and from an old-age index of 132 to one of 216 (meaning 216 people aged over 65 for every 100 children and young people up to the age of 14), the Italian population as a whole is ageing at a pace rapid and substantial, suggesting that the most arduous and emotionally demanding changes of residence – such as those involving a move from one municipality to another, and often from one region to another – can only decline in frequency, as they are clearly suited to ages that, if not exactly youthful, are certainly not advanced, not least because they are associated with major life events such as changes of job, marriages, the birth of children, the receipt of inheritances and the like. If this is not the case, it is clearly because residential mobility on this scale – involving long-distance and permanent moves – has grown to such an extent that it has become a defining characteristic of generations whom we are mistaken to regard as passive and waiting for events to unfold; generations who, on the contrary, have never been so ready to embrace events, to become actors rather than spectators. This is the second reason, following the ageing of the Italian population, that attests to this distinctive trait of Italians.

As we have previously noted, the three-year period 2023–2025 will see the highest number of people changing their place of residence from one municipality to another. At the current annual rate at which these moves are taking place, the entire Italian population is set to change their municipality of residence within 40 years; thus, given that the average life expectancy of Italians is 84 years, it is statistically sound to say that, on average over the course of their lives, Italians change – let us repeat: at the current rate – their municipality of residence twice as often as their municipality of birth. One might almost call it a frenzy of change, considering that for every move from one municipality to another, there are far more moves within one’s own municipality of residence. In short, the Italian population is ageing but faces life head-on, packing up and moving whenever necessary, and the more time passes, the more this trait becomes pronounced. So much so that the last three years have seen a record level of residential mobility: a remarkable indicator that tells us things in Italy are not going badly at all.