Italian poverty doubles

Up to almost five million says Caritas

(ANSA) - Rome, July 11 - Italy's poor have doubled to at least 4.8 million since the last year of GDP growth in 2007, Catholic charity Caritas said Friday. The poor were 2.4 million, or 4.1% of the population, when Italy's longest postwar recession started, it said.

In 2012, the last year for which figures are availanble, the number of "absolute poor" had risen to 4.8 million, or 8% of the population, Caritas said in a report entitled The Bottom Line of the Crisis. Lack of appropriate government intervention and the absence of a national plan to fight poverty were cited as main contributors to the "scourge" of poverty . The report, from the Italian Episcopal Conference's organization aimed at assisting the poor, criticized the "limited effort" of the Berlusconi and Monti administrations that governed during the years of the economic crisis from 2007 to 2013.

The "only response" to poverty during those years, according to the report, was the Social Card initiative: a Ministry of Economy and Finance program providing a 40 euro-per-month spending supplement to needy individuals who qualify, to offset the costs of food, health care, and utility spending. The Letta government, in place from 2013 to 2014, was seen as having neither improved nor worsened the situation. Premier Matteo Renzi's 80 euro monthly pay increase for low-income workers has had a limited effect on decreasing poverty, according to the report. Caritas appealed to Premier Matteo Renzi and Labor Minister Giuliano Poletti to implement the "Social Inclusion Income" initiative, designed to bridge the gap for families living in extreme poverty, bringing their below-poverty income up to the poverty level. “The Social Inclusion Income initiative will become reality if Renzi and Poletti make poverty a political priority and decide to tackle this scourge by rethinking the current methods of intervention," the report said.

Poverty now touches segments of society previously seen as not particularly vulnerable to the economic crisis, such as those living in the Centre-North, families with two children, families with a head of family younger than 35 years old, and employed families. Social services have been further weakened, said the report, citing a decrease of 6% in funding at the city level from 2010 to 2012; cuts which, Caritas pointed out, "hit a segment that's already under-funded".