Of MICHELE CONIA – In the Family Savings and Income Report of the Tagliacarne Study Center, Unioncamere, Calabria settles in the unenviable third-to-last position while, scrolling through the ranking of the Italian provinces, relating to the year 2022 and connecting savings and disposable income, we must go down to 81st place to find a Calabrian province, namely Cosenza, with a propensity to save of 6.5%.
Followed by Reggio Calabria in 88th place and Catanzaro in 93rd with, respectively, 6.2% and 6.1% saving capacity. Closing in penultimate position is Crotone in 110th position with families who manage to put aside only 4.6% of their income. If in northern Italy the propensity to save is 11% going down in latitude, the value is almost halved, reducing to 6.4%. Why do people save less in the South and not manage to put aside some of their income?
If family income in the South is around 32% lower than that of the Centre-North, the reasons are easy to explain: families find it difficult to set aside savings for future needs due to the low employment rate, poor income from work and occasional and due to the surge in inflation which has reduced purchasing power, inversely proportional to wage growth. If the South continues to consistently show smaller family budgets than the North, consequently the spending behavior of families will also be more prudent, also reflected in free time: fewer holidays and less entertainment.
But not only that, belts are also being tightened on food products due to the sharp acceleration in the prices of these goods which corresponds to a slowdown in family consumption. In fact, from 2014 to 2022, we read in the report, the incidence of the average monthly expenditure on food products in the South went from 21.7% to 23.5% of total purchases. But this is not surprising. Inflation increasingly erodes incomes with a progressive loss of purchasing power, pushing an enormous number of citizens towards the poverty line who are no longer able to face daily expenses, pay the rent, even giving up cure yourself. The economic fragility was also caused by the general increase in prices, leading to the absurd paradox, whereby in 2023 families, despite reducing consumption, found themselves spending +9% compared to the previous year.
I am convinced that pockets of poverty and phenomena of social and economic vulnerability will worsen with the
The condition of families is the mirror of an increasingly unequal country, with macroscopic gaps that will only widen significantly after the approval of the Calderoli bill. We do not give up and will continue the actions of peaceful struggle that the Constitution allows us alongside the territorial committees for the withdrawal of all differentiated autonomy. If the Calderoli Bill were to be approved, we are now putting forward the request for the individual Regions to challenge the law before the Constitutional Court and for the repeal referendum if it is declared admissible. (mc)
[Michele Conia è sindaco di Cinquefrondi]
