Rising poverty gnaws at Italian social fabric as election nears
ROBERTO Biondi’s 89-year-old mother has Alzheimer’s, is housebound and no longer recognises her son. She is also the family’s main breadwinner.
Her state pension of 800 euros a month covers her own living expenses and those of Roberto and her grandson, both of whom are unemployed and have little hope of finding jobs in Italy’s underdeveloped south.
“I have no idea how I will cope when she dies,” said Mr Biondi, 53, as he shopped for food in the coastal town of Herculaneum under the shadow of Mount Vesuvius. He receives no benefits of his own.
“I am poor. I am not ashamed to admit it, there are millions of others like me in Italy. This country isn’t working.”
Italy holds national elections next Sunday, March 4, and while much campaigning has focused on the divisive issue of immigration, pollsters say voters are most concerned about the economy, which has still not recovered from the 2008 financial crisis.
The government argues that the worst is over, pointing to 14 straight quarters of economic growth, but many Italians have yet to feel the benefits of the upturn, helping to explain why the ruling centre-left Democratic Party is trailing in the polls. Italy’s economy is still 6 per cent smaller than it was at the start of 2008, hobbled by a slew of old problems, such as a huge national debt mountain, a chronically slow justice system and stifling bureaucracy. This anaemic performance has pushed millions of Italians into poverty, stoking social discontent and fuelling the rise of populist or antiestablishment parties, such as the far-right anti-immigrant League and the maverick Five-Star Movement. The Five-Star looks set to emerge as the largest party next month and says it will introduce a universal wage for the poor if it wins power. Other parties are also promising to unleash billions of euros of fresh spending to revive the economy, money analysts say the country does not have. The number of Italians living in absolute poverty, defined as not having enough money to buy a basket of basic goods and services, rose to 4.7 million in 2016, according to the latest data from statistics office Istat, a three-fold increase in a decade.
Unemployment in Italy stands at 10.8 per cent, four percentage points higher than in 2008, while in the south it stands at almost 18.3 per cent, up 7.2 points in a decade. Youth unemployment in the south is 46.6 per cent, 13 points up on 2008 levels.
Mr Biondi sees the prospect of a universal wage as a potential godsend and he plans to vote Five-Star on March 4.
“At the moment the government offers no help to people like me,” he said. “I mean, it can’t get any worse can it?”