What the latest Caritas report on poverty in Italy says
The social lift is at a standstill and poverty now affects 1 million 960 thousand families, or 5,571,000 people (9.4% of the population). This is why it is necessary to radically reshape the typology of welfare interventions. The intervention of Francesco Provinciali
The 21st Report of the Italian Caritas on poverty in Italy, presented on 17 October on the basis of data collected by approximately 2800 "listening centers" in the country, should be useful for the political agenda of the nascent government and the new Parliament. While waiting for the 56th CENSIS Report, the elaboration of the evidence by the most important organization for the assistance of destitute people constitutes a useful document to know, analyze, understand and intervene on the growing discomfort that the repercussions and repercussions of the pandemic, of the war in Ukraine, the resumption of inflation, the looming recession and the widening gap in terms of social inequalities are dramatically accelerating.
The data are eloquent and significant, presenting the multiple aspects of poverty that now affect and involve 1 million 960 thousand families, equal to 5,571,000 people (9.4% of the population).
The Caritas Italia study also includes a transnational comparative survey conducted in 10 European countries, jointly with Caritas Europa and Don Bosco International, on the theme of school-to-work transition for young people living in families in difficulty, placing the resulting reflections on the policies to combat poverty, which can be usefully applied to those who will have to manage the NRRR and the European Next Generation Program.
The data presented by Caritas therefore present an insight into the faces of poverty in our time.
In 2021, 227,566 people met and supported were met and supported in the listening centers, with an increase of 7.7% compared to 2020, and a correlated increase in people from other countries (55% of the total but up to 65.7% and 61.2%, respectively in the North-West and in the North-East, while in the South and on the islands Italian citizenship clients prevail, equal to 68.3% and 74.2% of users respectively) and with margins of swinging fluctuating in and out of need. The ratio between men (50.9%) and women (49.1%) is almost equal, while the average age of the beneficiaries is 45.8 years.
The number of homeless people assisted is significant: 23,976 in total, corresponding to 16.2% of the users, almost half of which are concentrated in the Northern regions, where the gap between comfort and extreme poverty becomes more marked. The correlation between the state of deprivation and low levels of education is growing: those with a middle school certificate go from 57.1% to 69.7%, including illiterate people or those with only elementary schooling, while in the islands and in the South there are '84, 7% and 75%, with a prevalence of Italian citizens.
Equally eloquent is the data innervated in the situation of those who have a job and those who are without: the evidence pertains to the fallout of fragility in the era of pandemic, so the unemployed increase from 41% to 47.1 while conversely the employed drop from 25% to 23.6%.
Among the causes of latent or emerging poverty, economic conditions, lack of work and housing, family problems such as separations, divorces, couple conflicts, finally health and migratory flows, must be considered in order. They are causal evidences that must be read in a multidimensional perspective, as they are often coexistent with each other. Faced with the situations encountered, Caritas Italia has carried out approximately 1,500,000 interventions, providing for food, housing and reception needs, subsidies, personal hygiene, payment of overdue utilities.
The Caritas dossier highlights the multifaceted aspects of the condition of poverty, focusing in particular on the hereditary and intergenerational one, which mainly affects the lower-middle social classes: for years the research institutes (ISTAT and CENSIS in particular) have emphasized the progressive block of the social lift and the data from Caritas confirm this drift, which also touches and affects what was once called the 'bourgeoisie'. Not only is this lift stationary but also inaccessible even to the once more affluent layers of the population: these are situations that are often hidden, which must be intercepted and read in their exponential pervasiveness, in a mix of objective and disruptive conditioning (one becomes 'poor' little by little or due to sudden and devastating occurrences such as rents and unpaid bills or lost work) and emotional and psychological perceptions and falls (low self-esteem, mistrust, frustration, trauma, lack of hope and planning, lifestyle familiar).
As a result of a long experience exposed to poverty, we find ourselves alone and marginalized.
This deprivation of status reverberates and is 'inherited' even in the younger generations, with a conditioning exerted by inequalities in the starting conditions: "it is in fact the children of less educated people who interrupt their studies prematurely, stopping at the eighth grade and in some cases to the elementary school certificate only; on the contrary, among the children of people with a degree, more than half reach a high school diploma or the same degree. Also on the work front there are elements of clear continuity. More than 70% of the fathers of the assisted are employed in low-specialized professions ”.
In the face of situations of need, the support of Caritas therefore concerns not only taking charge to provide material aid but – especially in the case of intergenerational poverty – the restitution of relationships of trust and integration into the community to which they belong, to avoid social isolation. This indicator will be useful for radically reshaping the typology of welfare interventions, starting with the citizenship income which must pursue the inclusive perspective in the world of work and concern the ascertained cases of actual need: from what is illustrated in the Report it appears that the recipients they were 4.7 million people, since it concerns less than half of the absolute poor (44%).
According to Caritas, the "income" should reach "all those who are in the worst conditions", starting from situations of total poverty. It is necessary to overcome a welfare concept and a bureaucratic method of social safety nets, with particular attention to the younger generations on whom the socio-cultural deprivations inherited from starting conditions loaded with objective, serious limitations of status and belonging heavily fall.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/economia/cosa-dice-lultimo-rapporto-caritas-sulla-poverta-in-italia/ on Tue, 18 Oct 2022 06:32:06 +0000.