Drawn up by the Catholic Church’s pastoral organization Caritas, the “Grass in the Cracks” report on poverty and social exclusion points out that a continuous increase in the number of Italian families suffering from this situation was reported in the last ten years, totaling 2.217 million people or 8.4 percent of households.

Absolute poverty went from 6.9 percent in 2014 to 9.7 percentage points of the total population of this nation in 2023. One of the most worrying data refers to the incidence of this problem in the northern areas, the most industrialized and richest of the country, where the underprivileged grew by 97.2 percent.

The increase over the decade was 28.6 percent in central areas and 12.1 percentage points in the southern region, and the percentage incidence remains even more pronounced in the southern part, with 12 percent compared to 8.9 percentage points in the north.

The analysis, published on the official website of Caritas Italy, underscores that 34 percent of persons who grew up in poor families remain in precarious financial conditions so the so-called inherited poverty is a vicious circle that affects 20 percent of adults.

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