Public expenditure on pensions - it is written in the 2014 Censis Report - is equal to 61,9% of expenditure on social services and is the highest share in Europe: 16 points higher than the EU average.
The average gross amount of pension income is 1.284 euros per month, but 41% of the benefits paid out are less than 1.000 euros. Pensions make up 64,3% of family income for the elderly, capital income 27,6%, employment income or self-employment income 8,1%.
''Of particular importance – continues Censis – are the forms of participation in the labor market, which debunk the taboo of a full coincidence between old age and retirement or, even more, of a definitive exit from the labor market''. According to the Report, there are almost 2,7 million people aged 65 and over who carry out regular or undeclared work: 1,7 million from time to time, just under a million continuously. If so - we add - why complain if the Fornero reform has increased the retirement age and started the overcoming of the key institution of seniority benefits? There was the passage that allowed workers to retire as soon as possible and continue working by cumulating pension and income.
The long-lived – confirms Censis – have “a capital solidity that has increased over the years''. In fact, the net family wealth of elderly families grew by 117,8% between 1991 and 2012 (that of all families by 56,8%) and is worth an average of 237 thousand euros. If in 1991 the elderly held 19,3% of the total net national wealth, today the share has risen to 34,2%. Furthermore, 79,6% of elderly families (compared to 71,6% of all Italian families) own at least one property.
''The picture described – concludes Censis – of good economic availability of long-lived people in general resizes poor-minded readings that too often associate old age with poverty and marginality''. We share. But what does Minister Giuliano Poletti think of the widespread nervousness in the Democratic Party against the Fornero reform?
The Francescheides
“If envy is one of the seven deadly sins, who am I to persist in driving around in a small car in order to smooth the hair of the filthy beast of social envy, instead of challenging it by traveling in a Mercedes as my rank of Sovereign?”.
