Population ageing is one of the most important demographic phenomena of this century. Driven by fertility decline and the continuing extension of the life expectancy, the process of population ageing has not been uniform across time and space. Italy has one of the oldest populations in the world. The combination of a very old population and large territorial differences has made Italy an interesting laboratory for studying population ageing. The purpose of this paper is to study how population ageing developed between 2002 and 2014 across different geographical areas within Italy. We analyse patterns of population ageing across the five major socio-economic regions using the 110 provinces of Italy as our spatial units of analysis. We use a statistical model that integrates patterns of variation of population ageing data by accounting for autocorrelation in space and time. The results indicate that the provincial age structures tend to converge and demonstrate the importance of considering the role of space in studies of population ageing.

中文翻译：

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意大利人口老龄化：时空指数在时空上变化的实证分析

人口老龄化是本世纪最重要的人口现象之一。在生育率下降和预期寿命的不断延长的推动下，人口老龄化进程在时空上并不一致。意大利是世界上最古老的人口之一。非常老的人口与巨大的地域差异相结合，使意大利成为研究人口老龄化的有趣实验室。本文的目的是研究2002年至2014年间意大利境内不同地理区域的人口老龄化情况。我们使用意大利的110个省作为我们的分析空间单位，分析了五个主要社会经济区域的人口老化模式。我们使用统计模型，通过考虑时空的自相关来整合人口老龄化数据变化的模式。结果表明，各省的年龄结构趋于融合，表明在人口老龄化研究中考虑空间作用的重要性。