The sandy beaches, Baroque towns and vineyards of southern Italy have made it popular with British holiday makers and second-home owners for decades, but a new study has warned the region is undergoing catastrophic demographic and industrial decline.
The decline of the "Mezzogiorno", the southern regions, has been under way for years, but the report by an economic think tank revealed that its levels of unemployment, industrial contraction and population loss have dramatically worsened after six consecutive years of recession.
For the first time since the First World War, the number of people dying in the southern half of Italy has surpassed the number of babies being born, according to the report by Svimez, the Association for the Industrial Development of the Mezzogiorno. » | Nick Squires, Rome | Thursday, October 30, 2014
