Studies of Depopulation in the Mountains of Italy

IN lands of old civilization and dense settlement progressive of mountainous areas, with abandonment of fields and dwellings, is a well known phenomenon. The trend is particularly marked in Alps, where scanty economic resources have forced inhabitants to lead lives of hard labor and penury that are repugnant to generation of today. Throughout Alps as a whole, but more particularly in French Alps, this trend reached a peak in decade I88I-i890. A period of stagnation followed, but since World War movement has been resumed on an even greater scale than before. Only in Eastern Alps is progressing slowly and with relatively slight intensity in scattered localities. In highlands, which occupy four fifths of surface of kingdom of Italy, there are wide zones of demographic decline. Since outlets for expansion into other parts of world are closed, population, where natural rate of increase is high, is becoming ever more densely concentrated on narrow, relatively level, and already overpopulated tracts that lie within or, border on regions themselves. The Geographical Committee of National Research Council of Italy, in co6peration with National Institute of Agricultural Economics, has initiated a series of regional studies intended to throw light on this movement in its geographical. economic, and social aspects. The field work is being carried out by authorities familiar with different regions of country.' The scope of these investigations of mountain (spopolamento montano) has been defined as covering not only larger causes for decline in population but also the total or partial abandonment of territory by inhabitants . . . with continuous or intermittent shifting of centers of rural life and deterioration of geographico-economic conditions in regions under examination. Indeed, in Italian Alps there are a good many areas where depopulation in sense of term just indicated is associated with a static or even an increasing total number of people. This is occurring where population is moving down from higher to lower levels of ground or else where exodus of families is counterbalanced by a high birth rate or by immigration into settlements on valley floors, as a result of causes more or less independent of environment (such as public works, industries, military enterprises, etc.)