Among advanced economies, Italy is at the bottom of the financial literacy ranking. Only 37% of the citizens of our country prove that you have basic financial skills: a figure much lower than the EU average (52%), very far from the results of Germany (66%), France (52%), UK (67%), but also from those of Greece (45%), Spain (45%) and Poland (42%). This is what emerges from a hearing of Dario Focarelli, general manager of the National Association of Insurance Companies (Ania), before the Senate's Public Education and Cultural Heritage Commission, where the the bill S. 1196 containing the new “rules for education for economic citizenship”.
The numbers are taken from a study by the World Bank and Focarelli underlines that the capacities taken into consideration refer “to simple operations of calculating interests, of assessing the impact of inflation on purchasing power, or to elementary principles such as the it is advisable to diversify one's investments.
Another study, this time by the OECD, shows that among Italian adults, linguistic skills (i.e. the ability to understand and deal with written texts appropriately) and mathematics (i.e. the ability to use numerical and mathematical concepts) are among the lowest in the 24 countries of the area.
In particular, "only 3,3% of Italian adults reach high levels of linguistic proficiency - continues the general manager of Ania -, against the 11,8% average of OECD countries, while 27,7% of Italian adults have only elementary linguistic skills, against a much lower average of 15,5% in the participating countries . With regard to math skills, the situation is even worse: 32% of Italians limit themselves here too to elementary or lower skills, against only 19% on average for the other 24 participating countries”.
These data highlight a development gap which, Focarelli points out, "has strong consequences on the current economic competitiveness of our country and weighs significantly on the future development opportunities of our economy and our society", consequently "financial education, insurance and social security becomes relevant not only for spreading economic literacy, necessary for the understanding of increasingly complex economic-financial phenomena, but also with the dual objective of increasing awareness of how society produces and finances the goods and services it has need and to pursue sustainable growth of the economy, emphasizing the link between a responsible use of money and the environmental and social sustainability of the economy”.
The bill under discussion provides for the creation of a Technical-scientific committee that monitors and evaluates the effects of new educational policies. The general manager of Ania requests that "the representatives of the main economic sectors, including a specific representation of the insurance sector, also participate in the activity of this body, according to the importance that insurance and social security issues have in our society".
Furthermore, according to Focarelli it is necessary to include in the educational programme, "alongside economic, educational and financial skills, also social security and insurance skills", and to identify "as priority recipients some weak segments of the population excluded from the labor market", expanding the program "also to training initiatives towards activities that help members of these groups to get out of their condition of weakness".
