|
People
Cultural Demography
Italy has the fifth-highest population density in Europe--about 490 persons per square mile or 200 persons per square kilometer. Italy's estimated population of approximately 60 million is comprised mainly of ethnic Italians in this linguistically and ethnically homogeneous country.
Apart from the predominantly Italian ethno-linguistic population, there are small clusters of German communities in Bolzano, French communities in the northwest, Slovenes in the northeast, Albanians in the southeast and Greek communities in the south. Immigration has increased in recent years, however, while the Italian population is declining overall due to low birth rates.
While Italian is the predominant language, parts of the Trentino-Alto Adige region are mainly German-speaking. In addition, there is a small, French-speaking minority in the Valle d'Aosta region, and a Slovene-speaking minority in the Trieste-Gorizia area.
In terms of religious affiliation, Roman Catholicism is predominant, with the vast majority of the population nominally Catholic. That said, all religions are provided equal freedom before the law by the constitution. Human Development
An estimated 97 percent of the population, aged 15 and older, can read and write. About 98 percent of males are literate, whereas females have a slightly lower literacy rate of 96 percent. Italians have an average life expectancy at birth of 79 years of age - 76 years for males, 82 years for females - according to recent estimates. The infant mortality rate is 5.76 deaths per 1,000 live births.
About 5.1 percent of GDP is spent on health expenditures in this country; about 4.3 percent of GDP is spent on educational expenditures. Access to education, sanitation, water, and health is regarded to be very good.
With a strong gross domestic product (GDP) and a correspondingly high per capita, as measured by purchasing power parity in United States (U.S.) dollars, Italy is a relatively wealthy country. However, this statistic masks disparity between the more industrialized and wealthier northern part of the country and the less industrialized, more agricultural and significantly poorer "mezzogiorno," or southern region.
One of Italy's key concerns about the enlargement of the European Union that will include countries of Central and Eastern Europe, the Baltics and Mediterranean Europe is the likely loss of important structural and regional funds. These funds are currently provided to poorer regions of the European Union, one of which is Italy's mezzogiorno. A readjustment of the apportionment of these funds to take into account the far poorer areas of the accession - candidate countries could mean that Italy would see far fewer such funds - or perhaps none at all.
One notable measure used to determine a country's quality of life is the Human Development Index (HDI), which has been compiled annually since 1990 by the United Nations Development Programme (UNDP). The HDI is a composite of several indicators, which measure a country's achievements in three main arenas of human development: longevity, knowledge and education, as well as economic standard of living. In recent rankings of 169 countries, the HDI placed Italy in the very high human development category, at 23rd place.
Note: Although the concept of human development is complicated and cannot be properly captured by values and indices, the HDI, which is calculated and updated annually, offers a wide-ranging assessment of human development in certain countries, not based solely upon traditional economic and financial indicators.
Written by Dr. Denise Youngblood Coleman, Editor in Chief, www.countrywatch.com; see Bibliography for research sources.
|