One hundred thirty-six billion and 600 million euros. Italian families spend a lot on welfare, a figure that is worth 7.8% of GDP and accounts for 17.5% of the net family income (5,317 euros per family). Health (38.8 billion) and assistance to the elderly and other family members in need of help (29.4 billion) are the most important areas; the third is that of job support: 25 billion a year for transport, meals and other mobility services. Then the education of the children, with a family expenditure of 12.4 billion; preschool education and childcare: 6.4 billion; 11.2 billion for general family assistance. The expenditure for supplementary pensions and insurance protection is 8.3 billion. The smallest area is that of culture and leisure, with an expense of 5.1 billion.
“The Italian welfare system today appears insufficient for the challenges that await us” says Andrea Mignanelli, CEO of Cerved Group who presented the welfare report of Italian families in the presence of the minister for equal opportunities and the family, Elena Bonetti. .
“The fragmentation of family structures, the demographic imbalance, the change in relationship models put the family under pressure, in great difficulty in exercising this role” explains the manager, underlining how “in 4 cases out of ten, the family is made up of a single adult, in which three out of ten elderly people live alone, alone bears most of the care burden of family members. In 65% of cases, assistance to the elderly is provided exclusively by family members ».
But education also represents a problem: “The gap between Italy and European countries can be tackled if we act not only by improving the school and university supply, but also by supporting demand, that is the ability of families to complete the educational paths of the children. For these reasons, the renewal of our welfare system cannot be fully resolved by the relaunch of the large public systems, which is still necessary. It must start from the family, from the plurality of current family relationship models and from the multiplicity of emerging needs “.
In this sense, the hope is that the NRP is the driving force for developing a new model of subsidiarity, which calls new social protagonists to exercise their role. Starting with companies “increasingly aware of exercising a social role towards the communities (stakeholders) with which they interact: workers, their families, local communities, the supply chain”.
And with this in mind, Cerved presented 10 proposals for a new model of national welfare:
- Choosing the model of subsidiarity
- Encourage corporate welfare
- Measure the social impact of projects
- Make public spending more selective
- Avoid a future of poor elderly people, revive supplementary pension
- Investing in aged care
- Start creating a system national Long Term Care with private contribution
- Develop local health services and prevention
- Align Italy with education levels Europeans, help families support the educational path for children
- Reconciling life and work, supporting peers opportunity