Evolution of the economic and social context: Italy is not doing well with inequalities between North and South
Regional social progress index: Italy is not doing well, Basilicata is doing well in the South but behind when analyzed in comparison with the European context.
Commissioner for Cohesion and Reform, Elisa Ferreira, presented the latest edition of the EU Regional Social Progress Index at an event organized in Brussels by the European Committee of the Regions. The report measures social progress in EU regions and allows the Commission to evaluate the quality of life and well-being of citizens.
The EU Social Progress Index measures well-being and social progress across all EU regions using 53 socio-economic and environmental indicators, including indicators relating to citizens’ perceptions and trust. It combines economic and social indicators to ensure that our policies go beyond gross domestic product (GDP), to better reflect the development of society and citizens’ perceptions, so that we can build a fair, sustainable and inclusive Europe. The index was developed to examine social progress and attitudes at a regional level, complementing GDP, which is often the most widely used index.
Social Progress Index (Eu-Spi) scores are calculated on a scale from 0 to 100, with 0 indicating the worst performance and 100 the best, i.e. the ideal performance. However, there are cases where some scores exceed 100.
Given the average of the Italian regions, Italy obtained an overall score of 88.4: Basilicata, on the other hand, 83, making it the 198th region out of 236 monitored.
Basilicata obtained the best score on the perception of safety (114.2). The survey, however, is characterized by a temporal misalignment between the year of dissemination of the data, the current one, and the reference year. For example, the safety macro area includes the “traffic deaths” indicator which refers to 2021 data on 2020.
The worst performance, however, was achieved by Basilicata for the advanced education indicator (which measures, among other things, the population’s level of education, the gender gap and active citizenship) of the macro opportunity area: 46, 2.
The score of the “freedom and choice” indicator is also low: 66.9. In short, the indicator evaluates the perception that citizens have of their freedom regarding life choices and job opportunities. As regards the Italian regions, in the first 3 places the autonomous Province of Trento (99.3), Friuli Venezia Giulia (97.5), the autonomous Province of Bolzano (96.9), while in the last 3 are Calabria ( 82.5), Campania (80) and Sicily (75.9).
THE NUMBERS OF BASILICATA (RANK 198/236)
THE ITALIAN RANKING
