THEItaly she became impoverished. Per capita income has not yet returned to the levels of 2005 and we are at lower values than the average for the euro area (in 2005 we were slightly higher). There crisis it has not hit everyone in the same way: a marginal number of the population (a couple of percentage points with respect to the total) has left the middle class which, however, has maintained, or rather slightly increased, its share of income while the number of people in absolute poverty (an income of less than 820 euros per month for a single person in a metropolitan area): 4,5 million people are poor (about 2,5 million more in the last 10 years) with the increase concentrated in young people .
However, in a world that mainly communicates in 140 characters, the risk of reality being artfully distorted is high. In this perspective, the choice of the EU a few years ago to capture the multidimensional nature of poverty and social exclusion seems rather questionable to me. The EU uses three indicators (risk of poverty, severe material deprivation, belonging to a family with low work intensity) and it is sufficient to fall within one of the three to be at risk of poverty or social exclusion. Even the economic significance of each of the three would be discussed. Consider, for example, the intensity of work which is calculated on the basis of individuals of working age in each family and by calculating the number of months in which they worked out of the total months of the year; the intensity is considered very low when it is less than 20%, regardless of the income level of the worker! Hence the result, once echoed on the web and in the media, that in Italy 28,7% of people are "at risk of poverty or social exclusion". A large number that lends itself to easy exploitation by that "economic indifference" that appears more and more frequently in the debate. Furthermore, considering only income and not wealth when constructing poverty indicators seems a rather rough approximation, especially in a country like ours where household assets (above all real estate) are on average (if not higher) levels of the EU. However, even inherited wealth fails to protect the poorest.
A set of indicators that describes a serious reality and poses the problem of completely redesigning the welfare system, an essential tool for maintaining the trust in democracy of vast sections of the electorate. The basic income, recalled in these days, cannot be conceived outside of this global redesign. The Second Republic did not reform welfare by adapting it to the changing world and to the characteristics of the Long Recession but handling the available evidence with caution, not chasing economic indifference, abandoning slogans and getting used to commercials are necessary steps to get to the vote without deluding the electorate again and to maintain, in the long run, a minimum of trust in the institutional system.
