ROMA – There is a part of Italians who have lifted themselves out of poverty in 2023 thanks to the increase in employment, even if inflation has continued to erode their incomes. But those who were already on the margins are worse off: the share of the population in conditions of serious material and social deprivation increased by 4.4% compared to 2022, and in the South by 5.5%. Overall, this is 2.8 million people.
The conditions of large families and those with at least one foreign member are worsening. The investigation Istat on “Living conditions and income of families” outlines a picture with few lights and many shadows, where the support measures and the increase in employment only partially alleviate the effects of prices.
Despite a slight reduction in the share, from 24.4% to 22.8%, in 2023 over one in five Italians is at risk of poverty or social exclusion: almost 13.4 million people. The improvements are not found throughout the territory, they are much more marked in the North. The average of 22.8% in fact varies very differently, between 11% in the North-East and 39% in the South. “In this scenario – denounces the CGIL – differentiated autonomy will further aggravate the situation in the South, where the incidence of poverty is also greater, and inequalities in the country are destined to increase”.
The reduction in real incomes, the effect of inflation, does not help: the drop is 2.1%. And the effects are felt even months later: according to the Confcommercio-Censis forecast survey, Italians’ purchasing intentions for 2024 are very moderate, significantly decreasing compared to the period before the pandemic (March 2019). For household appliances, for example, the figure goes from 29.6% to 20.3%, for cars from 16.5% to 11.1%, for technological products from 29.6 to 24.5%.
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Incomes are not only decreasing compared to the previous year, but also compared to 2007, the year preceding the first serious financial crisis of the current millennium. In real terms, families are still losing 7.2%, with the greatest decline in the Center (-10.8%) and in the South (-10.2%). In 2022, only the incomes of the self-employed grew in real terms, a very limited growth (plus 0.7%), which however does not compensate for the greater cumulative loss of the category compared to 2007.
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The Istat survey also highlights the positive impact of the new universal single allowance, which has contributed, starting from 2022, to mitigating the effects of inflation. An important expense for the public budget: 8.8 billion more than the social spending to support family responsibilities in 2021, an increase of 139%. 85.3% of families gained from the new measures, while 9.6% lost. But since it is a universal measure, it benefits the richest and the poorest in the same way, and therefore makes a limited contribution to the reduction of inequalities, which remain very consistent between income groups, between territorial areas and between categories of workers. And indeed, Istat notes a greater growth in the number of beneficiaries among residents in the North-West Regions, even if overall the Gini index, which measures inequalities, is reduced by 0.66%.
And speaking of inequality, in 2022, the total income of the wealthiest families was 5.3 times that of the poorest families.