Population of Italy continues to shrink.

Italy's population has dropped to under 59 million, national statistics agency ISTAT said on Monday, with the number of elderly people continuing to rise as the nation's birth rate plummets.

The number of people living in Italy as of 31 December 2022 fell to 58,997,201, amid an "increasingly unbalanced" generational ratio, the ISTAT report found.

For every child in Italy under six, there are more than five elderly people, according to the age index used in the report.

There are 193 over-65s for every 100 young people under 15, compared to 46 over-65s in 1971, the census found.

The decline in Italy's population is offset by the "positive dynamics of the foreign population", the report said, with 5,141,341 registered foreigners (up 2.2 per cent compared to 2021), making up 8.7 per cent of the population.

The report found that the median age in Italy has risen to 46.4 years, with 51.2 per cent of the total population female and 48.8 per cent male.

Italy's birth rate fell to a new record low of 393,000 in 2022, with almost 7,000 fewer births than in 2021 (-1.7 per cent) or 183,000 fewer (-31.8 per cent) compared to 2008.

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