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The Age of Discontent: Italian Households at the Beginning of the Decade

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  • Tito Boeri

    ()

    (Bocconi University, CEPR)

  • Andrea Brandolini

    (Bank of Italy, Research Department)

Abstract

In the Italian public debate growing attention has been recently paid to “household impoverishment”. Subjective indicators of economic condition show that this concern reflects a common sentiment of the Italian population. On the other hand, estimates based on the Bank of Italy’s Survey of Household Income and Wealth reveal a surprising stability of income distribution in the period 1993-2002, after the sharp widening amid the 1991-92 recession. A number of possible reasons that can account for this apparent inconsistency are investigated: data deficiencies; disappointed expectations; significant distributive changes across socio-economic groups which have cancelled out at the aggregate level; higher income mobility not captured by static inequality indices.

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Article provided by GDE (Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di Economia), Bocconi University in its journal Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di Economia.

Volume (Year): 63 (2004)
Issue (Month): 3-4 (December)
Pages: 449-487

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Handle: RePEc:gde:journl:gde_v63_n3-4_p449-487
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Keywords: household confidence; income inequality; poverty; income mobility;

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Find related papers by JEL classification:
  • D31 - Microeconomics - - Distribution - - - Personal Income and Wealth Distribution
  • I3 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Welfare, Well-Being, and Poverty

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  1. Andrea Brandolini & Luigi Cannari & Giovanni D'Alessio & Ivan Faiella, 2004. "Household Wealth Distribution in Italy in the 1990s," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 530, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
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  6. Tito Boeri & J. Ignacio Conde-Ruiz & Vincenzo Galasso, . "Protecting Against Labour Market Risk: Employment Protection or Unemployment Benefits?," Working Papers 2003-17, FEDEA.
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  9. Shorrocks, A F, 1978. "The Measurement of Mobility," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 46(5), pages 1013-24, September.
  10. Tito Boeri & Axel Boersch-Supan & Guido Tabellini, 2002. "Pension Reforms and the Opinions of European Citizens," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(2), pages 396-401, May.
  11. Lambert, Peter J & Aronson, J Richard, 1993. "Inequality Decomposition Analysis and the Gini Coefficient Revisited," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 103(420), pages 1221-27, September.
  12. cipollone piero & Anita Guelfi, 2003. "tax credit policy and firms' behaviour: the case of subsidy to open-end labour contract in italy," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 471, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
  13. Cowell, Frank A., 1989. "Sampling variance and decomposable inequality measures," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 42(1), pages 27-41, September.
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  15. Jeffrey A. Mills & Sourushe Zandvakili, 1999. "Statistical Inference via Bootstrapping for Measures of Inequality," Macroeconomics 9902003, EconWPA.
  16. Paolo Del Giovane & Roberto Sabbatini, 2004. "L�introduzione dell�euro e la divergenza tra infl azione rilevata e percepita," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 532, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
  17. Andrea Brandolini & Piero Cipollone & Paolo Sestito, 2001. "Earnings Dispersion, Low Pay and Household Poverty in Italy, 1977-1998," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 427, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
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Cited by:

  1. Francesca Modena & Concetta Rondinelli & Fabio Sabatini, 2013. "Economic insecurity and fertility intentions: the case of Italy," Temi di discussione (Economic working papers) 931, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
  2. Molnár, György & Kapitány, Zsuzsa, 2007. "Bizonytalanság és a jövedelmek újraelosztása iránti igény Magyarországon
    [Uncertainty and the demand for redistribution in Hungary]    ," Közgazdasági Szemle (Economic Review - monthly of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences), Közgazdasági Szemle Alapítvány (Economic Review Foundation), vol. 0(3), pages 201-232.
  3. Claudio Quintano & Rosalia Castellano & Andrea Regoli, 2009. "Evolution and decomposition of income inequality in Italy, 1991–2004," Statistical Methods and Applications, Springer, vol. 18(3), pages 419-443, August.
  4. Claudio De Vincenti & Ruggero Paladini & Corrado Pollastri, 2005. "For a Welfare-Oriented Taxation Reform in Italy," Giornale degli Economisti, GDE (Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di Economia), Bocconi University, vol. 64(2-3), pages 189-213, November.
  5. Gabriella Berloffa & Paola Villa, 2007. "Inequality across cohorts of households: evidence from Italy," Department of Economics Working Papers 0711, Department of Economics, University of Trento, Italia.
  6. Eisenhauer, Joseph G., 2011. "The rich, the poor, and the middle class: Thresholds and intensity indices," Research in Economics, Elsevier, vol. 65(4), pages 294-304, December.
  7. Paolo Del Giovane & Roberto Sabbatini, 2006. "Perceived and Measured Inflation after the Launch of the Euro: Explaining the Gap in Italy," Giornale degli Economisti, GDE (Giornale degli Economisti e Annali di Economia), Bocconi University, vol. 65(2), pages 155-192, November.
  8. Massimo Baldini, 2005. "Inflation inequality in Italy," Center for the Analysis of Public Policies (CAPP) 0008, Universita di Modena e Reggio Emilia, Dipartimento di Economia "Marco Biagi".
  9. Riccardo Massari, 2009. "Is income becoming more polarized Italy? A closer look with a distributional approach," Working Papers 1, Doctoral School of Economics, Sapienza University of Rome.
  10. Riccardo Massari & Maria Pittau & Roberto Zelli, 2009. "A dwindling middle class? Italian evidence in the 2000s," Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer, vol. 7(4), pages 333-350, December.
  11. Giarda, Elena, 2013. "Persistency of financial distress amongst Italian households: Evidence from dynamic models for binary panel data," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 37(9), pages 3425-3434.
  12. Antonio Bassanetti & Concetta Rondinelli, 2013. "Italian households� opinions on the difficulty of saving," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 147, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
  13. Gabriella Berloffa & Francesca Modena, 2010. "Economic well-being in Italy: The role of income insecurity and intergenerational inequality," Working Papers 168, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
  14. Rosalba Manna & Andrea Regoli, 2012. "Regression-based approaches for the decomposition of income inequality in Italy, 1998-2008," Rivista di statistica ufficiale, ISTAT - Italian National Institute of Statistics - (Rome, ITALY), vol. 14(1), pages 5-18, October.

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