This repository contains a data visualization project developed for the Data Visualization course as part of the MSc in Data Science at the University of Milan-Bicocca (UNIMIB).
The project investigates Europe's demographic aging crisis through a rigorous end-to-end pipeline: from raw data acquisition on Eurostat to publication-quality charts built with Python and Datawrapper.
The analysis is structured around three core research questions, each addressing a different dimension of the demographic phenomenon:
- How old is Europe really getting? Mapping the scale and geography of demographic aging across EU27 member states, tracing how the age structure has evolved over the past six decades.
- What are the structural causes? Investigating the two converging forces behind aging, falling fertility rates and rising life expectancy, and their combined "scissors effect" on the continent's demographic balance.
- Can migration reverse the trend? Assessing whether net migration flows are sufficient to compensate for the natural population deficit accumulating across the EU27.
- Python (
pandas,numpy): Data acquisition, cleaning, preprocessing and exploratory analysis across all 6 Eurostat datasets. - Python (
matplotlib,seaborn): Draft chart production for data verification and visual prototyping. - Python (
geopandas): Choropleth map generation for geographical pattern analysis. - Datawrapper: Final publication-quality charts, styled for presentation use.
- Canva and Powerpoint: Slide layout and presentation design.
- Italy leads Europe with a median age of 49.1 years in 2025, the highest in the EU27, nearly 10 years above Ireland (39.6).
- No EU27 country reaches the replacement threshold of 2.1 children per woman. The EU27 average stands at just 1.45 in 2022 and has been below replacement since 1978, 47 consecutive years.
- Life expectancy gained +12 years since 1960, reaching 80.9 years on average in 2024. The gap between Spain (84.0) and Bulgaria (75.8) amounts to 8.2 years within the same Union.
- 20 out of 27 EU countries record negative natural growth, deaths outnumber births. Migration has become the primary driver of population change across the continent.
- Latvia is the only EU27 country losing population from both directions simultaneously: negative natural growth (-7.4) and negative net migration (-2.5).
Data/ — Raw Eurostat datasets and all processed outputs
europe_aging_analysis.ipynb— Main notebook: data cleaning, EDA and chart generationdemo_pjanind_tabular.tsv— Median age and dependency ratio by country (Eurostat: demo_pjanind)demo_pjangroup_tabular.tsv— Population by age group, used to build the population pyramid (Eurostat: demo_pjangroup)demo_find_tabular.tsv— Total fertility rate by country (Eurostat: demo_find)demo_mlexpec_tabular.tsv— Life expectancy at birth by country (Eurostat: demo_mlexpec)demo_gind_tabular.tsv— Natural growth and net migration rate (Eurostat: demo_gind)spr_exp_pens_tabular.tsv— Old-age pension expenditure as % of GDP (Eurostat: spr_exp_pens)
Data/Dataset1–6/ — Cleaned long-format CSVs produced by the notebook, one folder per Eurostat dataset
Data/CSV_Datawrapper/ — Chart-ready CSVs formatted for direct upload to Datawrapper
Data/Grafici_Draft/ — Draft charts produced with Python (Matplotlib), used to verify data correctness before final styling
Grafici_Datawrapper/ — Final publication-quality charts exported from Datawrapper, organised by chart topic
Final_project_data_viz.pdf — Final presentation slides in PDF format
All data are drawn from Eurostat, the official statistical office of the European Union. Datasets were downloaded in May 2026 and are available under the Eurostat open data licence, which allows free reuse with attribution.
| Dataset | Description | Coverage |
|---|---|---|
demo_pjanind |
Median age, dependency ratio | EU27, 1960–2025 |
demo_pjangroup |
Population by 5-year age group | EU27, 1960–2023 |
demo_find |
Total fertility rate | EU27, 1960–2022 |
demo_mlexpec |
Life expectancy at birth | EU27, 1960–2024 |
spr_exp_pens |
Pension expenditure % GDP | EU27, 1990–2023 |
demo_gind |
Natural growth & net migration | EU27, 1960–2024 |
Developed by Andrea Porro as part of the MSc in Data Science program at the University of Milan-Bicocca (UNIMIB).