The poverty debate in Italy: from politics to statistics

Some significant stages characterise the debate on poverty in Italy over the last seventy years: the Parliamentary Commission of Inquiry into Poverty and the Means to Combat It in the early 1950s; the long period of the Poverty Commission, established in 1984 and definitively abolished in 2012; and the European Commission’s initiatives. When looking back at these stages from the specific perspective of statistical measurement, a close link emerges between the institutionalisation of the measure of poverty in official statistics and the political process, both national and international. The resulting wealth of statistical information, however, requires attention to be paid to the characteristics of the data to provide a correct reading. In the last two decades, a clear stratification of poverty by age and citizenship, which sees children and migrants at a disadvantage, has arisen alongside the traditional geographical divide. Looking ahead, the measurement assumption of an equal intra-household distribution appears to be less and less acceptable, due to its implications for the estimation of gender inequalities and child poverty.