Italy Marks National Grandparents' Day as Ragusa Data Charts Its Ageing

Italy marked the Festa nazionale dei nonni on 2 October, the date fixed by law 159 of 31 July 2005, which established the observance to celebrate 'the importance of the role played by grandparents within families and in society in general' and invited schools and local authorities to promote initiatives dedicated to the relationship between generations. In a note carried by Novetv and Corriere di Ragusa, the association Nonsi (Nonni Smart Italia) wrote that grandparents have become 'a cornerstone of family welfare', acting as a 'lifebuoy' in moments of difficulty and serving as custodians of the country's identity — the point of contact, it said, between memory and perspective.

For Ragusa, the Nonsi note cites Istat demographic data: of about 321,000 residents, some 68,000 are over 65, roughly 20 to 21 per cent of the population, with a provincial old-age index of 161 people aged 65 or over for every 100 children under 14. The note states that Istat does not census grandparents, because that status is a kinship relationship and therefore a role difficult to quantify, and concludes from national surveys indicating that just over 70 per cent of people over 65 have at least one grandchild that the province has between 42,000 and 46,000 active grandparents.

Ragusa Oggi, citing consolidated Istat territorial data for 2024, reports an average age in the province of 44.5 years — the lowest on the island, ahead of Catania at 44.8 and against 45.7 for Sicily as a whole — up from 44.3 in 2023, and an old-age index of about 160, against 156 a year earlier and a Sicilian average of 184.2. According to the Nonsi note, almost half of Italian families rely on grandparents for the day-to-day management of their children, taking them to and from school and helping with homework so that parents can reconcile work and family commitments, while one family in three makes use of their contribution, which the note says does not concern the household alone — pointing to so-called 'nonni sociali' engaged in volunteering in support of minors in difficulty or in conditions of educational poverty.

Ragusa Oggi describes a province of relatively close cities alongside countryside, hamlets and small centres where the family network retains considerable weight, and grandparents who represent time given to the family, assistance, memory and what it calls a small economic buffer. It records the other side of the arrangement: grandparents who live longer are often helping children and grandchildren while facing their own age-related needs, and will increasingly require services, assistance and dedicated policies. The 2005 law asked schools and local authorities to promote intergenerational initiatives; no further measures tied to it have been announced.