The five percent of the richest Italian families own approximately 46 percent of total net wealth. Not only that, Italy is currently below the European average for concentration of wealth, in the company of France and below Germany, the country with the greatest inequality in terms of net wealth. This is what emerges fromanalysis by the Bank of Italy developed on the first results of the new quarterly experimental statistics of Distributional Wealth Accounts (DWA) conducted by the European Central Bank.
Bank of Italy: wealth does not recover pre-debt crisis levels
Italian families have not recovered the “blow” of the sovereign debt crisis, unlike what happened in the other large European partner countries. According to the investigation “the main inequality indices they remained essentially stable between 2017 and 2022, after increasing between 2010 and 2016."
Between 2010 and 2016 the median value of net wealth it dropped in Italy from almost 200.000 euros to just over 150.000 euro. In parallel, the decline in the average value was much more limited. In fact, in the same period the Gini index, which photographs the distribution of wealth and which goes from zero (everyone has the same) to one (only one has everything), increased from 0,67 to 0,71 and the share of net wealth owned by the richest 5% of families has passed since 40 to 48 percent.
The failure to recover the pre-crisis level, explains the report, “is an entirely Italian peculiarity. In Spain there was also a decrease until the beginning of 2013, but thereafter the median value grew rapidly, exceeding that of Italy. In France, in the same period of time, median wealth largely exceeded that of Italy, while in Germany its growth reduced the gap compared to the highest levels observed in Italy from around 140.000 to 50.000 euros.
Bank of Italy: diversification is for the rich
The study highlights how less well-off families can mainly rely on possession of the house while the wealthier ones hold a more diversified portfolio in shares, deposits and policies. In detail, Bank of Italy highlights, "half of Italians' wealth" is "represented by homes" and "this percentage, however, varies greatly based on wealth". In fact, homes account for three-quarters of the wealth for families below the median, they stand at just under 70 percent for those in the middle class while they drop to just over a third for those belonging to the richest class. For the poorest families, deposits are the only significant component of financial wealth (17%).
However, the situation is different richer families who have a more diversified portfolio. Almost a third of their wealth is in fact represented "by risk capital linked to production (shares, participations and real assets intended for production) and a fifth by mutual investment funds and insurance policies", explains the Bank of Italy.
Compared to the past the situation has changed. In 2010, about half of the homes were owned by middle-class families; in 2022 this percentage had fallen to 45 percent, especially to the advantage of the richest tenth. “The share of homes owned by families below the median has instead remained stable over time at around 14 percent. Deposits increased by around 40 percent between 2010 and 2022, especially for families belonging to the richest tenth, whose share rose by six percentage points, reaching half of the total", reads the Bank's report of Italy.
Italy and other European countries
Speaking instead of other European countries, ECB statistics show that in the last five years household net wealth increased by 29%. In numbers it is approximately 13.700 billion euros. An increase mainly due to the parallel increase in the price of properties with the house which, even across the border, represents a very significant component of family wealth.
Over the same period, inequality indicators have fallen slightly, for example looking at the wealth gap between the richest 5% of families and the 50% of families in the lowest wealth bracket.
