Alessandro Minello
Economist Minello: «Stop passive welfare. Also review employment and training policies ”
TREVISO. The Covid effect has hit an already demographically suffering brand. This is the thesis of Alessandro Minello, a teacher at Ca ‘Foscari, in the face of the decline of 11,526 inhabitants in the province in just 3 years. And of these 600 only in the capital.
“Symptoms and signs have been evident for years”, says the economist, who teaches economics and industrial policy in Venice, “Demographic problems, sustainability of the social security and environmental model, emigration of young people, have led to a decline in the attractiveness of our system of national and provincial development ».
It is not only the more negative demographic balance brought about by the pandemic – even fewer births and an increase in deaths – that have triggered the mechanism that is so unprofitable: many employees have made different choices, others have changed sector, province, country. And foreigners have emigrated again or returned.
“The indirect effect of Covid is no less important”, Minello specifies, “If the older group has paid a heavy price in deaths, health care aimed almost exclusively at those affected by the virus has hit the most fragile, especially the elderly, who, due to the economic crisis, had already reduced visits and preventive care ».
Among the factors on which Minello emphasizes, the flight of many young people, potential fathers and mothers. “Covid arrived when the Marca and the capital had registered a demographic recovery, now not even the migratory component counterbalances the drop in births and the increase in deaths: fewer arrivals, fewer family reunions, more mobility to other areas”
When it comes to solutions, Minello puts family policies first. “We need medium-long term support, to regain confidence in the future and favor the choice of having one or more children”, he specifies, “real services, kindergartens, home care, combining work time with time to devote to the family, child support. Social security spending needs to be reallocated, with greater intervention on assistance to families, especially the less well-off. Only in Italy 50% of pension expenditure is paid to those who have paid less than 20 years of contributions, a passive welfare system to be borne by all citizens. And Italy is the country in Europe that spends the least, in percentage terms, on services for families and children: for 10 years, social security spending has traveled well above the trend in inflation and GDP ».
Minello launches the alarm on the sustainability of the system, but also calls for “management of migratory flows consistent with the economic and employment needs of the country, an intervention aimed at reducing unemployment, especially for young people, women and over 50”, with “different training courses with respect to to the past, to tackle functional and digital illiteracy and to promote technological absorption and stimulate an increase in productivity ».
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