The two-speed country. In the South, the strange boom in sickness certificates

The economic and production gap between Northern and Southern Italy, almost two years after the emanation of the state of emergency which coincides with the ominous advent of the Sars Cov 2 pandemic, is even more marked than in 2019, clearly affecting the indices on the quality of life. And while Milan confirms the first placement, already obtained last year, in terms of income and wealth, strengthening the position of the north with Monza and Brianza, but also thanks to the production areas of the North East, with Trieste in the lead and followed by Padua, Verona , Bolzano and Trento, as well as 11 provinces of Piedmont, led by Turin. In the center of the peninsula, with reference to the Report on the quality of life in Italy 2021 (carried out by ItaliaOggi and La Sapienza University of Rome, in collaboration with Cattolica Assicurazioni), only Florence stands out. The South rearmost in terms of well-being and profitability instead earns another sad record: as emerges from the data released by INPS, compared to the second quarter of 2020, 2021 saw a total increase in the number of sickness certificates more than doubled or equal to + 108.4% for men, + 80.5% for women and even + 107.4% for younger workers. An evaluation referred to multiple factors that certainly cannot fail to leave us perplexed. In short, the South is in the front row among the areas with the highest number of citizenship income and emergency income earners, and surpasses the center-north by some length also in terms of working days suspended due to illness: in the private sector, the North has an average of 10.7 days per beneficiary, the Center 11.3, the South and the Islands 13.6 days. While in the public sector there are no major differences considering an average of 10.2 days per worker. But returning precisely to absences for justified illness it can be deduced that the South proceeds instead at a crawl pace. At this point, it is inevitable that sick leave can be coupled with unemployment and outline an arid and deficient architecture also accompanied by the recent debate on the distribution of citizenship income earners which is anything but homogeneous. The beneficiaries of the DRC are not evenly distributed on the national territory, but are mainly concentrated in the southern regions and in the islands, where 60 percent of the beneficiary nuclei and 65 percent of the individuals receiving the benefit are located. All local and localized socio-economic characteristics that in the long run could give rise to a linear regression at the local level: while in the northern municipalities on average about 2% of the population is beneficiaries of DRC, in the southern municipalities the percentage is equal to 6% . At the same time it is noted, always returning to the Report on the quality of life, that the 25 provinces surveyed in the tail group are almost exclusively located in the South. One representing central Italy: Latina for Lazio. The remaining 24 provinces belong to southern and insular Italy.