The historical roots of the Italian poverty regime

Abstract

This chapter traces the historical roots of the Italian poverty regime as it was shaped by a regionally uneven economic development and by a welfare state development that de facto ignored both the persistence of old and new form of poverty and the risks associated to single earner households with children. Poverty did decrease substantially in Italy with the post WWII recovery and the mass movement of population from rural to urban areas following the process of intense industrialization, particularly in the Northern regions. But its incidence remained comparatively high. Old forms persisted and new ones started to emerge, linked to the development of secondary, precarious labour markets in the informal economy. While the overall improvement in the level of living contributed to marginalize poverty in the policy agenda, the Italian welfare state developed not only following a male breadwinner model, but in a patchy and fragmentary way, leaving the most vulnerable largely unprotected. Neither the Christian Democratic Party nor the Communist Party - the two major parties until the early 1990s- had contrasting poverty in their agenda, although for different reasons.