Almost 1.36 million families received income or citizenship pension in August, 62.15% concentrated in the South: the subsidy against poverty – according to the INPS Observatory – cost 742 million in the month, slightly down compared to July but still on the highs of recent months. In August the people totally involved were just over three million (3,027,851), two thirds of which in the South and the Islands (two million). In the first seven months of 2021, families who received at least one month’s benefit were 1.6 million for 3.7 million people involved. 44% of the families benefiting from the income is made up of a single person and this will be the distortion that will be faced in the comparison on the modification of the measure that penalizes large families due to the way it is built.
There are 604,000 singles with the subsidy compared to just 32,500 households (for 208 thousand people involved) with at least six members. The families who receive the allowance with at least five members are 72,335 for 361,675 people affected. In practice, the families with at least five members who have the subsidy are 104,685, 7.7% of the total. There are 442,757 families with minors but 916,724 do not have them. The current equivalence system that will probably be questioned gives value one to the first member, 0.4 to the other adult members of the family and just 0.2 to minors. Citizenship income only partially intercepts poor families, looking above all at smaller households.
According to Istat data on poverty, in fact, in 2020 there were over two million families for 5.6 million people, a strong increase over 2019, especially due to the pandemic. A nucleus with only one elderly person over 75 who lives in a city with less than 50,000 inhabitants in the South is considered absolutely poor if they have less than 504.43 euros per month, but a family living in a metropolitan area in the North is also poor. if you have five members (3 between 18 and 59 and two between 11 and 17) with an income of less than 2,046 euros per month. Although the latter is poor for Istat, it is not poor for the criteria of citizenship income.
In August 2021, the recipients of Citizenship Income were over 1.22 million, while the recipients of Citizenship Pension (PdC) were almost 135 thousand. There are almost 231 thousand families with disabled people, with over 536 thousand people involved. The average amount disbursed nationally in August 2021 is 546 euros (576 euros for the RdC and 270 for the PdC). The amount is on average higher in the South and in the Islands (average € 581) than in the North (474). The distribution by geographic area sees 301,000 beneficiary families in the North for 592,000 people involved. In the Center there are 213,393 families for 427 thousand people involved while in the South there are 844,938 families with income or citizenship pension for over 2 million people involved. In the province of Naples alone, the families who receive the subsidy are 179,924, practically equal to the whole of Lombardy and Piedmont (180 thousand). Finally, INPS paid out at least one month of emergency income in 2021 to 574,000 families, 225,000 of which from outside the EU (39.2%). Over 1.3 million people were involved.