Banks leave the towns that are oldest, not the ones down south
In Carbone the old-age index is six times the average. But Italy's lowest income sits above Lake Como.
Banks leave the towns that are oldest, not the ones in the south
Carbone, in the province of Potenza, has 488 residents. Its old-age index stands at 1,827 — more than six times the national figure of 290.8. It is also the Basilicata town with the lowest average income, €13,281 a year, against €21,985 for the country as a whole. To take out cash or pay a bill, people here get in the car.
Basilicata has just opened Italy's first regional watchdog on banking desertification, the disappearance of branches from small towns. The news was framed as a wound of the south. The data draw a different line: it is not a region that ends up without a bank, it is a type of town. Old, emptied, poor. And those towns are in the Alps too.
Who loses the branch: not a region, a kind of town
DatiItalia does not track bank branches: that figure is not in our archive, and it is only fair to say so. But we know exactly who is left behind when a branch shuts, because the profile never changes — few residents, many elderly, incomes stuck at the bottom. A profile with no political colour and no latitude.
The town with the lowest average income in Italy is not in Basilicata, nor in Calabria. It is Cavargna, above Lake Como, in Lombardy: €7,349 a year, barely a third of the national average. Beside it sits Gurro, in the Piedmont highlands above Lake Maggiore. The poverty that empties branches runs along the mountains, from north to south.
The lowest incomes in Basilicata
Average declared income per taxpayer, 2023, Basilicata towns. Source: DatiItalia on MEF data
Where Basilicata flips: the oil of the Val d'Agri
Not every town ages at the same pace. In Viggiano, above Eni's wells in the Val d'Agri, the old-age index falls to 140: the lowest in Basilicata, roughly a thirteenth of Carbone's. Average income in Viggiano is €20,235, a step short of the national mean. A little further on, Marsicovetere reads 149.
Where the oil royalties arrive, the town stays young and the bank stays open. It is the exception that proves the rule: what decides is not latitude, it is the residents' current account. The regional capital, Potenza, at €25,203, is among the wealthiest towns in the region. There the branches are not missing.
The oldest towns in Basilicata
Old-age index (elderly per 100 under-15s), 2026, Basilicata towns. Source: DatiItalia on ISTAT data
Twenty years of incomes that do not rise
Carbone's income did not collapse overnight. It simply stood still. In 2008 a taxpayer declared €8,569 on average; in 2023, €13,281. On paper the figure grew, yet fifteen years of inflation swallowed almost all of it. A town that does not grow richer is, to a bank, a cost before it is a customer.
Below Carbone, in the ranking of Basilicata incomes, the same names return that also empty out: Craco, the abandoned hill town near Matera, Pietrapertosa clinging to the Lucanian Dolomites, San Paolo Albanese, the smallest town in the region with 211 residents. Small, old, poor. The branch leaves them last, but it leaves.
Carbone, the income that does not grow
Average declared income per taxpayer, 2008-2023. Source: DatiItalia on MEF data