Poverty is growing but the beneficiaries of the new 'income' are decreasing. Here is why

There have been many abuses in its use, also due to deficiencies in controls - as is the case for access to other forms of welfare -, but the Rdc has made a positive contribution to the fight against poverty: the frequency of poverty (the reduction in the number of poor people) has gone from about 5.5 million in 2018 to 4.5 million in 2019 and the reduction in the intensity of poverty has affected almost 60% of the poor, as highlighted in the annual report by former Inps president Pasquale Tridico. The Citizenship Income failed to intercept the entire population of the poor, and showed shortcomings especially in large cities (also because of the 10-year residence criterion for access to support) . It also failed for the active labour policies part.

The Citizenship Income was replaced last 1 January by the Inclusion Allowance as an instrument to combat poverty. It offers economic coverage to fewer people because it has new access criteria: it is granted to households with at least one disabled member; a minor; at least 60 years of age; in a disadvantaged condition and included in a care and assistance programme of the territorial social and health services certified by the public administration.
In March, 589,291 households benefiting from Adi were in receipt of assistance, for a total number of 1,240,584 members. In mid-February (the latest data made available by Inps and the Ministry of Labour) it emerged that out of 480,000 households that had been granted the benefit, 182,350 applications had been rejected because in many cases they exceeded the income thresholds. This high number of rejected applications is the result of tighter controls concentrated 'upstream' of the disbursements. But among the suspects there is also the negative effect of the Universal Single Allowance, which increases the incomes of families and, in the absence of any form of sterilisation for the purposes of access to Adi, produces the consequent loss of the right to receive the allowance even for households in situations of economic difficulty. These numbers are far lower than the estimates made by the government, which had announced a potential number of beneficiaries of about 737,000 households.

As for the second instrument, the Training and Employment Support, the active labour policy tool for people in economic difficulty that took off last 1 September, the last data provided by the Ministry of Labour and Inps dates back to 22 January and was of just 27 thousand people who had received the 350 euro monthly payment (against 170 thousand applications submitted and 68 thousand accepted). The government's estimate when fully operational is to have a potential pool of beneficiaries of 250 thousand people. We are a long way from that number. The Ministry of Labour and the Inps did not provide any updates on the measure, but it is clear that the sum of Adi and Sfl is far from covering the quota of people in difficulty, compared to the number previously protected by the Rdc.

In the coming months, it will be possible to verify whether these two new instruments will have a wider spread, and to assess the repercussions in terms of social distress for people in economic difficulty who are left without coverage. Alliance Against Poverty has raised an alarm: 'The economic requirements for Adi do not exhaust the pool of those who are actually at risk of absolute poverty. The risk is that they will not access the support measures that have proved necessary to save hundreds of thousands of people in conditions of extreme economic and social vulnerability from poverty,' claims the association, which groups 35 associations. If the numbers of rejected applications remain as they are, we will have to reckon with an increase in absolute poverty in our country, which will require urgent and structural interventions, as structural as this phenomenon has been for more than 10 years now'.