Yes, it was better when it was worse. According to the research "Modern family: from 1989 to today, how the family has changed in 30 years", commissioned by Bnp Paribas Cardif, an insurance company present in Italy since 1989, at the Eumetra institute, Italians today are happier than in the past and even think that working is easier. Of course, they are still very afraid of the future and most of them remain pessimistic about the economic outlook (as well as fearful of “new risks”, from natural disasters to cybersecurity), but the picture does not seem so dire compared to other narratives .
At least according to the sample of 1.000 people interviewed by Eumetra, from North to South and aged between 25 and 70, 71% believe that their family is happier than that of origin, even if only 35% declare themselves calm from an economic point of view and 62% believe that the happiness achieved is all in all precarious, given that on the other hand the risks have increased compared to the past: the fear of theft is added to the evergreens such as the loss of a job (63%) or health (62%) through technology (61%), cyberbullying (52%) and natural disasters (51%).
If this latter sensitivity can be explained by a greater awareness of the issue of sustainability compared to the end of the 80s (among the green habits of today's Italian families, differentiated collection and waste reduction stand out), one of the most surprising data concerns that of Work. Probably the most delicate issue on the country's political and social agenda seems to be experienced not so dramatically by the families interviewed: on average in an Italian family 76% work on a full-time contract.
Women are still penalized (35% have a part-time job, against 13% of men, 65% declare that they receive a lower income than men and 34% declare that they are a housewife) but on the other hand new solutions are gaining ground, such as smart working (37% have practiced it at least once) which make 72% of Italians think that working today is even easier than a few decades ago.
Scrolling through the research, other data emerge that testify to how times have changed compared to such an important year as 1989, when there were protests in Tianamnen Square in Beijing and the fall of the Berlin Wall. Some of which are consistent with what we would expect, and that is for example that today 40% of families have no children, 26% have only one and 10% of people are single (+110% compared to 30 years ago, from 4 to 8,4 million, according to Istat). Today there are 25,7 million Italian families, with an average number of members down to 2,4 from 2,8 in 1989 and from 4 in 1948, when families numbered less than half (11,8 million) and singles only 1,2 ,XNUMX millions.
It's not even surprising that marriages plummeted by 40%, in favor of cohabitation and that divorces have increased by 230%. Or that 51% of families own a dishwasher, against 27% thirty years ago, that 43% have installed an air conditioner in the house, against 11%, or that 95% use the Internet every day ( 70% of families have at least 6 connected devices at home) and that for this very reason landline telephones are now only present in half of homes, against 91% in 1989.
However, there are still some surprises, in spite of environmental sensitivity. If in fact one out of four Italian families declares that they avoid using the car, it is also true that today, in what should be the era of car sharing, 80% are equipped with it, against 78% thirty years ago (even more, compared to a period in which the car was a status symbol), and that still a third of families – exactly as in 1989 – have more than one. Not only that: today 55% of Italians use a bicycle, against 61% thirty years ago.
