Social cohesion and economic development: some reflections on the Italian case

Journal of Modern Italian Studies

2018

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Italy is facing its worst economic crisis since the Second World War. As many studies have already shown, the crisis is affecting the country's social class structure, thus accentuating several inequality tendencies. In this connection, the empirical purposes of the paper are twofold: i) to analyze whether accumulation and inequality in wealth are growing or declining in absolute terms; ii) to investigate the relationship between social class and wealth inequality. To this end, we adopt a longitudinal approachviz., we take the 1993-2014 period into account by using data from the Italian Survey of Household Income and Wealth. Our findings suggest that overall net worth has trended down in the years following the beginning of the crisis (since 2010), and that inequality in wealth has basically been increasing during the twenty-year period, with a decline from 2012 on. However, there has been no persistent social splitting process in wealth distribution by social class. Rather, there is a high (and increasing) level of domestic differentiation in terms of household wealth by class, mainly within the lower class and self-employed middle class, which could put further stress on social cohesion standards and allow new forms of social vulnerability to emerge.

Section: Methodsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Social class and wealth inequality in Italy over 20 years, 1993–2014

Dagnes

Filandri

Journal of Modern Italian Studies

2018

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“…All in all, this process narrows the socio‐economic distances between peripheries and wealthier areas (see Table 1). It thus seemed that the Kuznets curve, according to which economic and territorial inequalities are high during underdevelopment stages, increase during the early stages of development and then tend to decrease, was corroborated (Busso & Storti, 2013; Viesti, 2021).…”

Section: Spatial Imbalances and Peripheries: Originating Factorsmentioning

confidence: 98%

Exiting the periphery: Possible pathways towards a socio‐economic and institutional de‐marginalization of places

Regional Science Policy & Practice

Urso

Reid

2023

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What are the economic, social and institutional mechanisms that make it possible for peripheral areas to regain centrality? To address this issue, the paper takes stock of the current scientific debate on peripheries. Our reasoning is based on a general assumption according to which simple geographic features do not determine per se socio‐spatial divisions. Peripheral areas are not natural. By contrast, they are the outcomes of more or less intentional processes that imply hierarchical and power relationships, unequal allocation of economic resources, and reliance upon relational patterns and social norms. Therefore, it is essential to observe how and if multidimensional socio‐economic changes may occur within peripheral areas, deconstructing their marginality. In this regard, this paper highlights four main endogenous mechanisms upon which a demarginalization process may rely: 1) transformation in the features of the local institutional make‐up; 2) emergence of collective actions and ‘self‐governance’ processes at the local level; 3) renovation of elite groups; and 4) establishing economic renewal and innovation.

“…Apart from the insights concerning social inequalities, we can claim that the main provinces of Lombardy are wealthy places (Busso and Storti 2013). In recent years, however, they have also experienced persistent economic problems (e.g.…”

Section: Correlated Factorsmentioning

confidence: 99%

A tale of two epicentres: Lombardy and New York City at the outbreak of the Coronavirus pandemic

Torpey²,

Dagnes³

et al. 2022

Mod. Italy

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The paper explores the tale of two 'epicentres’ – metropolitan New York and Lombardy – and seeks to depict the socio-demographic patterns that characterise the worst cases of infection, hospitalisation, and death during the first six months of the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020. By drawing upon secondary data concerning sub-territorial units within the two regions – ZIP-code level and counties in New York and municipalities in Italy – the paper compares the characteristics of the two areas in an effort to understand both how they became the original major epicentres and how their experiences of the pandemic differed. We suspected initially that the pandemic in Lombardy was a function of a complex constellation of variables, such as the age of the population, the unexpected emergence of the virus, and features of the local health system. In New York, the pattern seemed to fit a more familiar dynamic, the kind one would expect from the course that most pandemics take: the poor suffer the worst. The paper tries to extend the understanding of the complex and not univocal mix of social variables that can facilitate the spread of a pandemic and make its effects extreme.