Meloni's Poor Italy: Record Requests to Caritas

Now Prime Minister Giorgia Meloni can claim a new record: in Italy there is a record number of citizens who turn to Caritas. In 2024, 278,000 families were assisted, 62% more than ten years ago and 3% more than the previous year. The ones taking care of them in the Northern Italian territories increased significantly (+77% compared to 2015), followed by those in the South (+64.7%). And, contrary to popular belief, requests also come in large numbers from Italians (42.1%), with the gap among foreigners (56.2%) increasingly reduced.

Overall, the aid reaches approximately 12% of families in absolute poverty, that is, without the economic resources to meet the essential needs for a dignified life such as food, housing and clothing. A total of 5.7 million people are in this condition (almost one in ten Italians), numbers that confirm the extent of the phenomenon already detected in 2023 and that reiterate, if there were any need, that poverty exists and is present in our society not as something residual, but structural, and no longer concerns only the unemployed, but also workers. And so, while the Prime Minister celebrates the record number of people in employment achieved under her government (one million jobs in two and a half years, the figures flaunted), and rejoices over unemployment having fallen to its lowest levels, the National Statistical Report 2025 delivered yesterday by Caritas Italy offers a different picture of the rosy reality painted by the Prime Minister's resounding declarations.

A merciless picture, given that 23.5% of the people who knock on the door of the CEI agency have a job, yet it is not enough to survive . Because it is poor work, now the norm rather than the exception: among 35-54 year olds the percentage of the so-called working poor , the data says, even exceeds 30%. In short - while the executive is horrified by the idea of ​​a minimum wage by law - in our country work is no longer a protective factor against poverty. Also because, the report continues, in the last 5 years wages have fallen by 4.4% and the overall loss of purchasing power of wages has been 8.7% ( the worst figure of all the G20 countries ). And there is another enlightening fact: if fifteen years ago the unemployed (who today are 47.9%) represented 2/3 of Caritas users and the employed just 15%, today the numbers are very different and certify a transformation of the phenomenon of poverty itself.

The average age of those assisted is 47.8 years, but the presence of the elderly is constantly growing: if in 2015 the over-65s were 7.7%, today they are almost double (14.3%). Those who have the greatest difficulties remain families with children, 63.4% of those who turn to Caritas. In this panorama, housing hardship continues to play a leading role: if on the issue the government has moved only to establish by decree new crimes for those who squat illegally (see the security bill ), it ignores or seems to ignore the alarming numbers that certify how one person in three (33%) of those who turn to Caritas manifests at least one form of difficulty related to housing. In particular, 22.7% of these people experience serious housing exclusion (people without a home, roof over their heads, guests in dormitories, in unsafe or inadequate housing conditions), while 10.3% cannot maintain a home (with respect to paying bills or rent).

If there is another piece of data that the government should note, it is the one on medical care: among the people followed by Caritas, 15.7% show health vulnerabilities, often linked to serious pathologies and the lack of response from the public system. About 9.9% of the population has had to give up on treatment due to long waiting lists and unsustainable costs, while the executive's decree law (flop) to respond to the emergency remains stuck in the meshes of institutional politics in an absurd conflict between the Government and the Regions.

FROM

Asia Buconi