Economic Insecurity in the Italian Macro-Regions

The interest for economic insecurity has grown constantly over the last decade due to the shock of the latest global crisis that has involved the wealth and behavior of households thus attracting the attention of many authors in contemporary literature. Furthermore, the concept of economic insecurity may be linked to the concept of economic inequality, since an increase in economic inequality may be connected to insecurity and vice-versa. The aim of this article is to measure economic insecurity from 2012 to 2016 in Italy both at national and sub-national level. The methodology applied refers to the economic insecurity index suggested by Bossert et al. (2019) and the data considered are taken from the Survey on Households Income and Wealth carried out by the Bank of Italy. Moreover, this work aims to investigate the possible link between economic insecurity and economic inequalities, measured through the share of wealth owned by the richest 5% of the population. The main findings show a relevant general increase of economic insecurity in the period between 2012 and 2014, and interesting differences in the variation of economic insecurity at sub-national level. Insecurity appears closely linked to the level of inequality and the trend of inequality in the previous period.