Country Map and Facts

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FACTS & FIGURES

POPULATION

• Italy has an estimated population of 58.1 million.
• Italy has one of the lowest birth rates in the world, at less than 9 per 1,000, and its
  0.07% annual population growth is due to immigration.
• Average life expectancy in Italy is 79.68, which is the14th-highest in the world.
• Areas in the north contain groups of German, French and Slovene Italians, and areas in the south have small clusters of Greek and Albanian Italians.
• From being a country of net emigration for most of the 20th century, Italy is now home to between 1.5 and 2 million immigrants.
• 67% of Italy’s population lives in urban areas.

GEOGRAPHY

• Italy covers 301,230km2, including Sardinia and Sicily.
• Five of Italy’s 20 regions are autonomous: Valle d’Aosta, Trentino-Alto Adige, Sardinia, Sicily and Friuli-Venezia Giulia.
• Italy has land borders with Switzerland, France, Austria, Slovenia, San Marino and the Vatican City, measuring 1,932km in total.
• Mountainous areas make up 75% of Italy.
• The highest point in Italy is Mont Blanc de Courmayeur, a secondary peak of Mont Blanc, at 4,748 metres.
• There are six active volcanoes in Italy, which has a fault line running from Sicily up to the Alps in the northeast, and there are frequent minor quakes in the south.

CLIMATE

• The far northern reaches of Italy have an alpine climate, with quite severe winters and heavy rainfall, although it is warmer in the valleys.
• The northern Italian plain and Po valley have warm summers (average range 24 to 28 degrees Celsius) and cold winters (average range from 2 to 8 degrees Celsius).
• The peninsula has a Mediterranean climate, with mild winters (average temperatures are 11 to 18 degrees Celsius) and hot, dry summers (average temperatures reach 28 or 30 degrees Celsius).
• Occasional Sirocco winds blow in from Africa, bringing hot, suffocating temperatures to the peninsula, approaching 40 degrees Celsius.
• Udine in Friuli-Venezia Giulia is the wettest part of Italy, with 1,520mm of rainfall per year, and the driest is in southern Sicily, with just 460mm a year.

ECONOMY

• Unemployment is about 8.6% in Italy, though there is a sharp divide between the north, where there is very high employment, and the south, where 18 to 20% of people are out of work.
• Italian GDP is $27,700 per capita, and is growing at 1.3%.
• Over 30% of the population work in manufacturing and industry.
• Major exports include clothing, cars, machinery, engineering products and food, of which over 50% go to EU countries.
• 30 million people visit the country every year, and at $28.8 billion, Italy has the fourth-largest tourist income in the world.