The years of crisis have affected the well-being of Italians, and the timid recovery of recent years has not been enough to improve it. It is what emerges from Well-being barometer, calculated every quarter by CISL in collaboration with the Tarantelli Foundation and REF Ricerche: a tool which, by processing the data available to CISL and Istat, offers an overall picture of socio-economic phenomena. There are five research areas: Economic Activity, Employment, Education, Income/Tax Pressure and Social Cohesion.
The report for the second quarter of 2018 shows that the cyclical expansion peak is now behind us. Foreign demand, which was the main driver of Italian growth in recent years, instead became a brake at the beginning of 2018. And so it should come as no surprise that “in the first half of the current year, the Italian economy has maintained a slow growth rate; GDP increased by 0.3 percent in the first quarter and by 0.2 in the second, a slower pace than that recorded in 2017".
There is no shortage of positive ideas, such as household spending which, despite slowing down, has continued to grow, or investments, especially in plant and machinery, which have maintained a positive tone, despite a strong volatility, thanks above all to tax cuts. But all this was not enough and the CISL barometer itself "remained stable in the last year and a half after the growth that had characterized the three-year period 2014-16, and only in the second quarter of this year was there a more evident improvement for the converging action of the domains of Economic Activity, Social Cohesion and Income”.
Assuming the value of the indicator to be 100 in the first quarter of 2007, it can in fact be observed that in the second quarter of 2018 it reached 91.6, thus recording an increase of 1.9 percentage points over the previous quarter. "However, the increase seems to be linked - says the Barometer - to a great extent to factors of a transitory nature, and should not herald the start of a new phase of growth". Especially since the Italian economy suffered a new slowdown in the second half of 2018. GDP in the third quarter, according to Istat reports, showed no cyclical change interrupting the constantly expansive phase that began in 2015. Both the domestic components of demand and net exports made a zero contribution.
The prospects for the end of the year and for 2019 are not better: in its analysis, the CISL Barometer recognizes the presence of some provisions in the draft budget law which will affect social cohesion (such as basic income), but "if the economy continues to slow down, it is probable that towards the end of the year and then during 2019, the overall indicator of household well-being could undergo a new turnaround".
Economic activity. Ultimately, the whole scenario is at risk: for some months Italy has in any case been showing a clear worsening of the economic situation only partially attributable to a European framework that is proving to be decidedly less positive than expected; however, country-specific trends and the assessment of the financial markets of our economic picture also count. Overall, therefore, the framework of the economic indicators at the beginning of the fourth quarter of the year leads us to believe that it will be unlikely that a strengthening of productive activity will take place in the short term.
Income. The most positive signals come from incomes. After a long period of stagnation, the wages showed brisk growth. In the PA, contractual wages recorded a trend variation of 2 per cent in the second quarter and 4 per cent in the summer months of July and August. In the private sector, on the other hand, a decidedly more regular trend was observed. However, the consumer confidence indices remained stable at high levels, reflecting the positive mood of households: concerns about the performance of the economy and in particular of the labor market were confirmed, in connection with the weakening of demand for work in the summer; but judgments on the personal situation have instead improved.
Work. For the past year and a half the indicator of the Work domain has been recording a slowdown; in the second quarter of this year it decreased once again on an annual basis, reaching a value of 78.3 (it was 80.1 in the same period of 2017). Observing the trend of the two indicators that summarize the quantity and quality of the work it emerges that it is in reality the latter that determines the worsening of the synthetic indicator of domination.
Social cohesion. Starting from this quarter, the absolute individual poverty index and the relative poverty index were introduced in the Social Cohesion domain. This allows us to observe how the years of recession have affected the well-being of citizens, in particular by accentuating inequalities and aggravating the phenomenon of absolute individual poverty. In 2017, Istat estimated that 5.6 million individuals (8.4 percent of the entire population) are in conditions of absolute poverty.
This is the highest value since 2005. Since 2007, the absolute poverty rate referring to individuals has risen from 3.1 percent to 7.3 percent in 2013; after a partial reduction in 2014, the trend was still upward. Between 2016 and 2017, the incidence increased from 7.9 to 8.4 percent. For 2017, estimates indicate that there are approx 3 million families in relative poverty (12.3 percent of all resident households), corresponding to a total of 9.3 million individuals (15.6 percent of the entire population).
Instruction. Among the variables that make up the domain, a certain reduction in the share of is observed
NEET since the fourth quarter of 2017. NEETs with a lower level of education (up to middle school) thus remained practically unchanged compared to a year earlier, coming to represent 22 percent of the population corresponding; it is a category of young people particularly at risk because they add lack of work to insufficient school preparation; there is therefore the impossibility of building experiences and qualifications to spend on the market and it is no coincidence that they are also defined as "left behind".
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