Unequal Italy, the cry of Oxfam: “5% of Italians hold more wealth than 80% of the poor”
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An increasingly divided and impoverished Italy. The World Economic Forum in Davos confirms what many Italian families have already experienced on their own skin over the past year. First pandemic, then war and finally inflation are exacerbating daily life. Oxfam Italia will draw the map of the divisions, which in its report “DiseguItalia” highlights how the gap between the rich and the less well-off in our country has increased. One fact above all: the wealth in the hands of the richest 5% of Italians (owner of 41.7% of net national wealth) at the end of 2021 was higher than that held by the poorest 80% of our compatriots (31.4 %).
Expensive energy and increasingly onerous shopping carts are causing unprecedented distortions. The climate was not already positive, as Oxfam explains. «Between 2020 and 2021 the concentration of wealth in Italy is growing: the share held by the richest 10% of Italians (6 times as much as held by the poorest half of the population) increased by 1.3 percentage points on an annual basis against a substantial stability in the share of the poorest 20% and a decline in the wealth shares of the other deciles of the population,” the report notes. Specifically, “the super rich with assets exceeding $5 million (0.134% of Italians) were owners, at the end of 2021, of an amount of wealth equivalent to that possessed by 60% of the poorest Italians”. Despite the decline in the financial assets of Italian billionaires in 2022, after the peak recorded in 2021, «the value of the fortunes of the super-rich Italians (14 more than at the end of 2019) still shows an increase of almost 13 billion dollars ( +8.8%), in real terms, compared to the pre-pandemic period”.
The WEF warns: “Recession is likely, but inflation may have peaked”
fabrizio goria, sent to davos
However, there is another side of the coin to this. Although greatly attenuated by emergency public transfers, “in 2020 – the last year for which the distribution dynamics are ascertained – net income inequality grows, for which Italy ranks among the last countries in the EU”, notes Oxfam. Absolute poverty, stable in 2021 after a significant leap in 2020, “affects 7.5% of families (1 million 960 thousand in absolute terms) and 9.4% of individuals (5.6 million people)”. A phenomenon considered “alarming” by Oxfam, and which “has seen the share of families with an insufficient level of spending to guarantee a minimally acceptable standard of living double in 16 years and which today sees the poorest ones more exposed to price increases , first of all for food and energy goods». In 2022 when price flare-ups have hit their highest levels in decades, the situation is almost certain to get worse.
The WEF warns: “Recession is likely, but inflation may have peaked”
fabrizio goria, sent to davos
It is also and above all the labor market that suffers. As Oxfam points out, “new agreements between the social partners are particularly needed for the approximately 6.3 million private sector employees (over half of total private sector employees) awaiting the renewal of national contracts at the end of September 2022 ». Workers who risk, with the current indexation rules, “of seeing an adjustment in wages, which fell in real terms by 6.6% in the first nine months of 2022, insufficient to counter the increase in inflation”. This is why a clear answer is required. «The increase in the incidence of poverty was mitigated, in the emergency, by public interventions to support families, but the prospects for a decline are strong in light of the current risk factors for the Italian economy such as the impacts of the Russian conflict -Ukrainian and the growth of inflation», explains Mikhail Maslennikov, policy advisor on economic justice at Oxfam Italy. “Family support measures must continue and be better directed towards families in the greatest need,” he warns. It is also essential, according to Oxfam, «to abandon the transitional regime of the Citizenship Income for 2023, reforming the only structural measure to combat poverty that we have; as well as stimulating new agreements between the social partners aimed at rapidly redefining more effective systems of indexation of wages to prices to provide adequate protection to less well-off social groups and less protected forms of work in low-paid sectors”. If in the first two years of the pandemic the country has shown considerable resilience, in 2023 it may no longer be so obvious.
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