Donato Toma, the President of Molise, Italy will give people €700 ($769.65 US dollar) per month to relocate to villages in the area that have less than 2,000 people. Residents who take the president up on his offer must do one thing in return: open up a business.
Molise will help with that as well by providing €10,000 (£9,000) per month to each town with less than 2,000 residents for “building infrastructure and promoting cultural activities.”
The entire province of Molise only has 305,000 residents and is among one of the regions in Italy that has lost more residents than it has gained.
In fact, the entire country has seen a decrease in population either because of death, declining birthrates, or young people migrating to other European countries in search of better job opportunities.
Between 2014-2018, Italy’s population fell by approximately 677,000. In 2018, alone, nearly 157,000 left the country.
Currently, Italy is the only major European country that expects its population to decline even further in the next five years.
To combat this problem some provinces in Southern Italy have also sold abandoned homes for practically nothing to get people to move into them. Others have opened up their towns to asylum seekers crossing the Mediterranean from Lybia.
