November 6, 2025, 2:02 p.mNovember 6, 2025, 2:02 p.m
The number of centenarians in Italy has reached a new high. On January 1, 2025, 23,548 very old people lived in the country. That’s over 2,000 more than the previous year.
This emerges from information published by the statistics office Istat on Thursday. Almost 83 percent of them are women. Compared to January 1, 2009, the number has more than doubled. At that time there were 10,158 centenarians.
At the beginning of 2025, there were also 724 people living in Italy who were at least 105 years old, it said. This is an increase of 654 compared to the previous year. The number of “supercentenarians” – i.e. people at least 110 years old – is 19, two fewer than the year before. Here too, the greater female longevity is evident: only one of them is a man.
Between 2009 and 2025, 222 people in Italy reached the age of over 110, including only 17 men (eight percent). As of October 2025, the oldest living Italian is a man from the southern Italian region of Basilicata, who is now over 111 years old. The oldest living Italian woman lives in Campania and will celebrate her 115th birthday in a few days.
The new figures from Italy underline the extent of the demographic crisis in the southern neighboring country. The aging population is leading to rapidly rising healthcare costs. At the same time, the working population that pays into the social systems is shrinking. (sda/apa)