Italy’s poverty rate alarming: Study

An official report shows that 30 percent of people living in Italy were suffering or risked suffering poverty and social exclusion in 2012, Press TV reports.

According to a recent report by Italy’s National Statistics Institute, ISTAT, the number of people in serious economic hardship amounted to 14.5 percent of the population last year, which is about two percent higher than in 2011 and five percent higher than the European average.

Coldiretti, the agricultural workers’ organization of Italy, said in a recent study that the poverty rate in the country has almost doubled over the past five years, leaving almost one in ten people unable to afford the basic needs including food and healthcare.
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The organization also said that almost five million Italians live in absolute poverty, which is about eight percent of the country’s population.

“Italians have changed their priorities these days, putting healthy nutrition on the back burner, because they have to pay bills, taxes, and other obligations. We are really worried about the quality of agriculture and food products,” Coldiretti’s Lorenzo Bazzana told Press TV.

Italy is suffering its most serious recession since World War II. Its economy contracted by 0.2 percent in the third quarter of 2011 and by 0.7 percent in the fourth quarter of the same year.

Over the past decade, Italy has had the slowest growing economy in the eurozone.

The country is still facing an unemployment rate of 12 percent. The joblessness has topped 40 percent among young people aged between 15 and 24.