Poverty as the surface of much deeper stories. Stories of life in a land that continues to suffer from all the evils of this time: the birth rate decline, the flight of young people, depopulation, precarious employment, the high cost of living, the scarcity of means of support, poverty. The region is preparing to cross the last mile of a difficult year, with its back bent, in a time that the numbers describe coldly but which, in the streets and in the homes, takes on the characteristics of renunciation.
Economic and social reports describe this territory as an area of extreme structural fragility on the periphery of Europe. A place where statistics converge towards parameters of widespread, sedimented, almost normalized suffering. Istat’s BES report once again turns the spotlight on income inequalities and families’ risk of poverty. A photograph that draws two Italys and places Calabria among the most exposed territories.
The risk of poverty concerns 32.8% of the population, almost double the Italian average, which stands at 18.6%. Only Campania and Sicily are worse, stuck at 35.6% and 38.4% respectively. But it is the data on inequality that is even more severe: the index reaches 5.9 in Calabria, no one in Italy does worse. The difference between those who have sufficient resources and those who struggle to support essential expenses thus becomes a gap that crosses cities, towns and families, separating opportunities from destinies.
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