The population of Venice

Demographic indicators and trends stress the width of the decreasing process followed by Venice in the second half of the 20th century.

The decrease in population is not an exclusive characteristic of Venice, indeed it involves the whole country and particularly the urban areas of the north-centre. Yet in the long period it is the migration gap more than the natural gap which influences the decrease of population in Venice, causing remarkable changes in the structure of age classes and in family composition [1]. The macro trends which stand out from the evolution in Venice’s demographic structure are referable to:
 the low birth-rate;
 the high death-rate, which in the last twenty years has become more than double of the birth-rate;
 the steady predominance of emigrants on immigrants;
 the determining influence of the natural gap on the population decrease.

More recently, together with a high death-rate per 1000 inhabitants (due to the high percentage of elderly) there is also a slow but progressive minimization of the negative gap between born and dead. Another case which has been observed is a cut in the migration gap, attributable to an absolute and relative growth of people who come to live in the city and to a lowering of the discharges. Differently from what happened in the past, nowadays the demographic crisis is basically due to the natural gap.