“The extraordinary measures for the Covid-19 pandemic have played an important role for some of the categories most affected by the crisis, reducing the risk of poverty of the unemployed by about 6.9 percentage points, by 3.5 points for the inactive and by 2.6 points for self-employed workers “. Istat writes this in its report on income redistribution in 2020.
The distribution by geographical area shows how the impact of extraordinary interventions was more significant in the North-West (-4.8 percentage points) than in the other areas of the country. In the South, the risk of poverty remains considerably high, reports Istat, even if the extraordinary intervention for Covid-19 has reduced the risk of poverty in the South by 2.1 percentage points and by one point in the Islands.
The statistical institute recalls that “starting from the second quarter of 2020, the Covid-19 pandemic caused the temporary blocking of some economic activities, with consequent effects on the incomes of the workers involved. To address this situation, both the existing income support measures, such as the redundancy fund and citizenship income, and new extraordinary monetary transfers such as the Emergency Income (REM), the bonus for self-employed workers, were used. the bonus for home helps and carers. The specific effects of these measures in terms of reducing inequality were analyzed with the model ».