I am 651 thousand applications were submitted for the new ADI inclusion allowance; 446 thousand those worked, 288 thousand were accepted and 117,461 were rejected. The first data released by the INPS, updated to January 22nd, are even lower than the estimates made by the government, which had announced a potential beneficiary audience of approximately 737 thousand families in the program. At the moment, therefore, there are less than 300 thousand families who, starting from 26 January 2024, receive the payment of the Inclusion Allowance: a figure confirmed by the Minister of Labor and Social Policies, Marina Calderonewho corrected what he declared a few days ago, when he spoke of 450 thousand beneficiaries.
For the Alliance against Poverty, «288 thousand families are few, very few, compared to those in Italy who need economic support, so as not to fall or fall back into a condition of absolute poverty; or to avoid falling from a fragile condition of relative poverty to a much more dramatic one of absolute poverty. On September 14, the Alliance presented a Position Paperin which he highlighted that the number of beneficiaries of the support would be halved: now, the widespread numbers force us to keep our attention high».
The problem of rejected applications also emerges: as the INPS note explains, on the one hand there are «the first 287,704 applications, which have successfully passed the preliminary investigation phase and will be paid on 26 January with an average amount of 645.84 euros ». On the other hand, however, there are 117,461 applications rejected due to lack of requirements. Among the main causes are: negative result above the threshold on the DSU (Single Substitute Declaration), exceeding the income thresholds, failure to declare work activity”.
It would be necessary to know in detail what the weight of the individual reasons for rejection is, but some first useful elements come from the statements of Minister Calderone: what determined the rejection of the application was, «in 50% of cases the lack of the family income requirement compliant with the terms of the law and, in 20% of cases, the absence of the age or disability requirements of the requesting family unit. In the remaining 30% there are various reasons that led to a negative outcome of the application”.
It is on these aspects that the Alliance against Poverty raises the alarm: «As we have highlighted to the government on several occasions, especially in our Position Paper on law no. 85/2023, the economic requirements required for the ADI do not represent and do not exhaust the audience of those who, in Italy, are actually at risk of absolute poverty», we read in a note from the association. «The risk, in short, is that they will not access the support measures that have proven necessary to save hundreds of thousands of people in conditions of extreme economic and social vulnerability from poverty. It’s a risk we can’t afford to take: those in poverty must be supported and accompanied, regardless of their personal, health and working conditions».
For what concern Training and employment supportwhich is a measure of job activation rather than of combating poverty as it is aimed at individuals and limited to a maximum of one year, the INPS data (updated on 22 January) speak of 250 thousand applications expected, 170 thousand presented, 70 thousand accepted. Even in this regard, the numbers are not comforting: just over a third of the requests were successful.
«The official INPS numbers confirm the concerns that Alleanza expressed well before these measures were introduced: the risk that the poor, divided into “categories”, remain largely without support and support policies capable of responding, at least partially, to their needs”, he comments Antonio Russo, spokesperson for the Alliance against Poverty. «If the ratio between expected applications and applications received and, above all, if the numbers of rejected applications were to remain the same, we would have to deal with an increase in absolute poverty in our country, which will require urgent and structural interventions, just as this is structural phenomenon for more than 10 years now. We renew our absolute willingness to make our skills, our professionalism and the analyzes we have recently conducted available to the government, useful for understanding and addressing the problem of poverty in our country in a more adequate way.”
Photo by © Daiano Cristini/Sintesi