With the Veca Index, social vulnerability gives voice to the heterogeneity of territories

Is called Old Indextakes its name from Salvatore Veca (political philosopher who passed away in 2021) and is a multidimensional indicator of social vulnerability, developed in the «Coping with social vulnerability through datasets» project, financed by Foundation Cariplo and promoted by Foundation Feltrinelli. A Milanese development, hers, but in which the University of Bergamo collaborated, in collaboration with that of Milan Bicocca, with a group led by the professor Annalisa Cristiniprofessor of economic policy and vice-rector of Welfare and sustainability at UniBg, who presented the results of the research during the conference ‘Social vulnerability: community building and Veca Index’ within the review Bergamo Next Level.

What does it mean that social vulnerability is multidimensional? “It is a complex and dynamic phenomenon, because it changes over time. We found 32 dimensions, from the combination of which we extracted six factors. The most important are low levels of education and low levels of income, because they explain almost 25.8% of vulnerable situations. This is followed by social fragility (which explains 16%), which includes unemployment, low employment rates, the percentage of the foreign population and low-income taxpayers”. The research, concentrated on 23 municipalities in the provinces of Milan and Lodi, has the objective “of finding a tool capable of describing – at municipal level – and measuring the phenomenon of vulnerability, capable of guiding territorial social policies”, continues Cristini .

The novelty of the approach lies in the paradigm shift, as Massimo Tarantino, Director of the Feltrinelli Foundation, explains: “’Coping’ is an innovative method that local authorities will be able to adopt and will be able to provide precious data to administrators, operators and researchers. The Veca Index is not a static elaboration, but, on the one hand, it takes a photograph of vulnerability and, on the other, it offers a simulation of a predictive scenario and, therefore, analyzes the way in which the photograph can change”. A dynamic tool that “represents an important advancement compared to the past. We have tried to shift attention to the territory, promoting interventions not only on individuals and their relationships, but suggesting systemic interventions, taking into account the state of health of the places. We will work with the Administrations that listen to us, because I believe that the principle of ‘long-life learning’ is for everyone, even for administrators”.

The path of the Veca Index does not stop here, because the observation of the provinces of Bergamo and Brescia has already begun: “We have collected some characterizing elements for the Municipalities of the Provinces of Bergamo and Brescia, relating to the period 2015-2021: the levels of income, housing costs and demographics. From this first investigation, we have drawn the first interesting ideas to delve into the merits and analyze these elements in depth also for the individual municipalities of these two Provinces. We hope to be able to return to Bergamo Next Level next year to talk about the results of our research”, continues Cristini.

It is the heterogeneity that distinguishes the two provinces that is of interest to the research: “Being aware of this and having tools to be able to measure these different dimensions is important in order to be able to design specific policies aimed at combating social vulnerability”.

The data issue still remains to be resolved, as he noted Monica Villa, Deputy Director of the Human Services Area of ​​the Cariplo Foundation: “The research on the Veca Index teaches us that it is necessary to accompany the actors on the topic of data. There is too much fragmentation, there is difficulty in communicating different data, social data with health data. We must overcome this problem to avoid overlapping responses and offer more coordinated ones.”