ABSTRACT
The plague of 1576-7 slowed down the demographic rise of the second half of the sixteenth century. The pandemics of 1630 and 1657 cancelled the gains of the periods 1580-1629 and 1631-55 and brought back the Italian population to the level of about n million. After 1870 a new phase started typically characterized by those patterns that scholars describe as 'demographic transition'. The death rate began to fall: from about 30 per thousand around 1875 mortality fell to about 15 per thousand around 1930. The fall which in Italy took place in about 55 years, had taken about 150 years in France and Sweden, about 125 years in England, about 40 years in Germany. The Italian industrial development definitely had the peculiarity of remaining concentrated almost exclusively in the north of the country. Classical economists in their optimism used to trust that automatic mechanisms would restore the balance between developed and underdeveloped areas.
