The Intensity and Velocity of Ageing Process in Italy at Local Scale: an Empirical Investigation

The paper proposes an empirical investigation about the spatial dimension of two indicators related to the ageing process: the share of elderly population at the beginning of 2022 and the change (percentage points) in the share of elderly from 2002 to 2022. These two indicators inform, respectively, on the intensity of the process (levels) and on the velocity of the process (variation in levels). Both are computed on a local scale (municipality). Empirical analysis will focus on describing the geographical distribution of these indicators and in particular in detecting their level of global and local spatial autocorrelation by means of univariate and bivariate spatial autocorrelation measures. The hypothesis on which the paper is based upon is that, on a local scale, an inverse spatial relationship may exist between the intensity and velocity of ageing process in Italy.