Long-term Trends Since the Early 1990s

Chapter 4 individuates the 1992 monetary crisis (devaluation of the Lira) as a turning point in the Italian economic development, starting the long period of sluggish growth, decreasing value of real wages, increasing both inequality and poverty. The 1990s were also the period when child poverty started to increase, and the conditions of the young to deteriorate, becoming, together with the North-/South divide, structural features of Italian poverty. During the same years, Italy started to become an immigration country, with migrants from developing countries mostly occupying the lowest rungs of the occupational stratification, thus being exposed to high risk of poverty. These characteristics were further heightened by the economic crisis and its long duration, which highlighted the weakness both of the Italian economy and of the Italian system of social protection. The increasing number of working poor, particularly in households with children, well exemplify this weakness.