ROME - The Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) has published a report showing that poverty in Italy has increased in the last year, with 5.6 million Italians currently classed as living in absolute poverty, compared to 4.6 million last year.

  The number had gone down in 2019 but has been steadily rising in the year and a half since the start of the pandemic. Absolute poverty is now at the highest level since 2005, despite many years of decrease before the pandemic.

  The greatest increase has taken place in the North of Italy, where the incidence of families in absolute poverty has risen from 5.8 percent to 7.6 percent since 2019. In the South the incidence has risen from 8.6 percent to 9.4 percent.

  In 2019, families in poverty were distributed relatively evenly throughout the country (43.4 percent in the North and 43.3 percent in the South), however the picture has now changed and in 2020 the distribution was 47 percent in the North and 38.6 percent in the South.

  The ISTAT report reveals that there are over two million Italian families living in poverty and a total of 5.6 million individuals - 9.4 percent of the population. In 2020 the numbers of minors living in poverty hit 1,337,000, equal to 13.5 percent.

  The 767,000 families with minors living in poverty are also much more likely to be living in more extreme poverty than other categories.

  Another of the worst hit categories is also foreign citizens, of which 29,3 percent are living in poverty, compared to 26,9 percent from 2019.

  However, in general terms, the intensity of poverty in Italy has gone down, which ISTAT puts down to the measures put in place by the government to help the poorest members of society throughout the pandemic, including the citizens’ income, emergency income and extension of the redundancy fund.

ol