MILANO – “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 of 2.6 points for self-employed workers “. Istat writes this in its report on income redistribution in 2020. A report that estimates that “the extraordinary measures implemented in 2020 (emergency income, bonuses for self-employed workers and maid bonuses) have contributed, together with the expansion in ” use of existing ones (RdC and Cig), to support household incomes, heavily conditioned by the economic crisis, reducing inequality, compared to an alternative scenario characterized by the absence of all the measures mentioned. reduces the risk of poverty from 31.8 to 30.2 and the risk of poverty from 19.1 to 16.2% “.
Numbers that arrive while the president of the Institute, Gian Carlo Blangiardo, in a hearing in the Chamber takes stock of the new inequalities produced by the pandemic. That has hit the job market hard. Employment dropped dramatically in 2020 “with” repercussions extending to January 2021; since February, employment has started to grow again, albeit gradually “. Between February and May 2021, the employed reached 22 million 427 thousand” a level – he said – in any case 735 thousand units (-3.2%) lower than to the pre-pandemic level (February 2020) and close to the levels recorded in mid-2015 “.
Blangiardo also remembers theimpact on consumption: final families suffered a collapse in 2020 of dimensions never recorded since the postwar period, with a decrease of 10.9% which brought the value to a level slightly higher than that of 2009 – and to that of 1997 if considered at the net of the effect of price changes. From the survey on consumer spending, the estimate of the average monthly household expenditure for 2020 is 2,328 euros per month in current values, down by 9.0% compared to 2019.
Despite the measures adopted, the picture of poverty is also gloomy, which in its absolute form has risen in incidence, both at the family and individual level, also increasing among those who have a job. “In 2020 – remembers Blanciardo – they are counted over 2 million families in poverty, with an incidence going from 6.4 in 2019 to 7.7%, and over 5.6 million individuals, up from 7.7 to 9.4% “. The incidence is confirmed as higher in the South” but it is in the North that the most marked growth is observed, both for families (from 5.8 in 2019 to 7.6%) and for individuals (from 6.8 to 9.3%) “. again highlighted the president of Istat, “poverty has increased among those who own a job”.