At the same time, the country's birthrate has long been on a decreasing path, and was now among the lowest in Europe.

"Since 1977, the fertility rate among Italian women has been too low to ensure a positive natural population balance (meaning births outnumber deaths)," the report said.

Some 464,000 births were registered in 2017, the lowest figure ever recorded in the country's history.

"Not even during war times in the past century, Italy has been registering so few children," Massimiliano Valerii, director of social research institute Censis, told the audience.

"It can be said this is a country on the verge of a demographic default."

As such, migrants in Italy -- whose average age was 33.6 against 45.4 of Italian nationals -- were more and more important in terms of both number and economic contribution.

SKILLED MIGRANTS, MORE SOCIAL MOBILITY NEEDED

In this framework, the report said Italy would need to attract more qualified migrants, and at the same time to improve socio-economic conditions of those already here.

"At the moment, many young people in Italy are migrants, and they do not compete with Italian workers, since they mostly do low-qualified jobs," Tronchin told Xinhua.

"The other side of the coin is that these migrants doing low-qualified and low-paid jobs are able to disburse only a low amount in taxes and social contributions," she explained.

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