Poverty in Italy

The subsequent six decades, preceding the rise of Fascism and the global economic crisis of 1929, witnessed significant improvements across various domains, albeit unevenly distributed among sectors and regions.

Although the Fascist regime adopted a fairly modern social welfare programme for public employees, the needs and risks of the rural population, the urban poor, and the systemically unemployed and underemployed were not adequately addressed.

This, however, caused credit restrictions, the devaluation of wages, and impacted remittances, overall exacerbating poverty levels and affecting various sections of the population, both across rural-urban and the north–south divide.

[15] Poverty in Italy is generally caused by low income and precarious employment situations, rather than lack of a support network.

[16] Certain aspects of Italy's poverty patterns trace their origins to the period of Italian unification in the latter half of the 19th century, significantly influencing pre-existing regional economic disparities, notably the north–south divide.

[17] These traits were further solidified by the choices made during the post-Second World War reconstruction and the transformative "boom years" of the early 1960s, which witnessed Italy's shift from primarily rural to predominantly urban and industrialised societal structures.