It is a two-sided Italy that emerges from the research by Intesa Sanpaolo and Centro Einaudi on saving and the financial choices of the population in 2021. The study, presented this morning, analyzed the relationship of Italians with savings and the influence that pandemic is having on household investment choices. The photograph has shown a dual Italy in which a part of the more dynamic population wants to leave again and to go back to making important purchases. However, there is also a significant share who are worried about the future, who are looking for security and who fear a reduction in their future income.
In any case, liquidity on current accounts increased by 110 billion during the period. However, the number of Italians able to save has decreased. The pandemic, although it did not strongly shake the standard of living (despite 400,000 families having lost all income, about 1.5% of the sample), caused a decrease, from 55.1 percent to 48, 6 per cent, or 6.5 percentage points, of the share of savers in the sample. This decrease is linked to the effect of reduced availability. Non-savers have returned to prevail over savers. Furthermore, the share of involuntary savers increased by 6.7 percentage points, essentially due to not being able to consume in the year of the pandemic due to restrictions on activity and mobility.
Many families have found themselves having to deal with the virus. According to the report, “9 percent of Italian families have suffered consequences on their own health or that of a family member: Covid has really entered one in ten homes”.
According to the study, “the extraordinary effort of Italian economic policy has made it possible to mitigate the negative economic effects of Covid on families. At the aggregate level, it appears that –8.9 per cent of GDP corresponded to a decidedly lower drop in disposable income ».
Now the eyes are turned to the future. The analysis underlines that the main objectives of savers in 2021 remain security in the long term and liquidity in the short term. The first question that is legitimate is what families who have accumulated excess savings will do. How many would like to reintroduce it into the economic circuit and how many would like to keep it? The sample here is divided into two parts. «One, relatively majority, would like to wait for the moment and set aside the nest egg set aside: it is 64 per cent. However, it is not the wealthiest part, but the one later in the year and that we could define as belonging to the lower-middle class and with limited education. The remaining 36 per cent, which includes university graduates, young people and those belonging to the middle-upper and upper class by income, have a different opinion and would like to relaunch their consumption, albeit with different priorities. The middle class is ready to spend again, in order, on travel, in a new car or new durable goods, in third place in a new house. Graduates always put a trip at the top of the list, a sign that the stopping of movements has been suffered, but they reverse the preferences that come later: first the house and lastly a new car. Young people understandably put the house first, then the car and finally travel ».