Italian welfare state
Later, the financial situation urged to introduce user charges in order to avoid wastages, even if this might lead to inequalities, and means-testing for common tests and medicine.
In 1992 a major reform allowed citizens to pay higher fees in order to receive private services within the SSN; by this way, public spending decreased.
Today the SSN is financed both by direct taxes and by the revenues of the local health agencies, made by partial or total payments on services.
Sometimes some families on low incomes who are eligible for means tested benefits can apply for a voucher to contribute to payment for the stipulated textbooks which are very numerous and expensive in Italy.
Students in primary and secondary education still have to pay minimal enrolment fees, usually around €20 per year, and the cost of books is not always covered by state vouchers.
[6] In 1978 the Fair Rent Act (Equo Canone) introduced a maximum fee for residential properties and four-year leases.
The problem of unemployment has been moderated in Italy by governmental benefits, in the form of cash transfers based on contributions (indennità di disoccupazione).
Since 1947, and with reforms in 1975, cash benefits are provided as shock absorbers to those workers who are suspended or who work only for reduced time due to temporary difficulties of their factories.
This institute, the Redundancy Fund (Cassa integrazione guadagni), aims to help factories in financial difficulty, by underwriting the costs of the inactive workforce, also supporting those workers that might lose part of their income.
The workers receive 80 percent of their previous wages, under a maximum level established by the law, and their contributions for pensions are considered as paid, even if they are not (contributi figurativi).
In 1919 it became compulsory and it covered 12 million workers: the Agency was renamed the National Institute for Social Insurance (INPS) in 1933.
The financial disorders of the early 1990s brought a raising of the pension age in 1992 and the introduction of the voluntary private insurance schemes the following year.
The reform, in order to decrease both fragmentation and public spending, was completed by the Dini Act in 1995 that introduced a flexible pension age between 57 and 65 years, and swung back to the contribution-based system.
Finally, in 2004 the Maroni Act tried to reform restrictively the pension system starting from 2008, but its effects are supposed to get deeply smoothed by the new centre-left government in charge since 2006.
The Italian welfare state's foundations were laid along the lines of the corporatist-conservative model, or of its Mediterranean variant.
[15] Reforms in the late 1990s led to non-profits and charities providing more welfare services on behalf of the government.
[16] The Catholic bloc found itself as a mediating force in the transition, with the church involved in public dialogue that furthered its own socially conservative views[17] and its charities filling these devolved welfare roles.
[18] Concurrently, economic migration for domestic labour became a larger factor in the Italian welfare state.
[19] As the 2000s came around Italy's welfare system expenditures favoured the elderly and middle aged for pensions and those who have worked in the formal workforce, especially those employed by large industrial companies.
The younger generation is left in the lurch as many of them, even those with higher educations and degrees, have never been able to find a job and must rely on their parents for support.
