With the repeal of the Citizen's Income in favor of the new Inclusion Allowance, Italy confirms its cultural and political resistance to the introduction of universalistic measures for the poor, derogating from national and European legislation, opting instead for selectivity in public policies. Starting from the available data, we attempt to examine the reasons for the decline in beneficiaries of the new measure compared to the previous one, which is the result of several inherent problems with the measure itself.

Index

The transition from citizen's income to inclusion allowance

The end of the Italian Citizen's Income program affected a measure that, in the final month of its implementation, still counted 598 families among its beneficiaries (INPS 2024), and which in 2021 had reached nearly 4 million people. Of the expenditure savings resulting from its repeal, estimated at approximately €1,7 billion (Bank of Italy 2023, cited in Baldini and Toso 2024), approximately €7.076,10 million have been allocated to the Fund for the Support of Poverty and Active Inclusion for 2024 (Chamber of Deputies 2023), in order to finance new related measures. The Employment Decree, in fact, defined the implementation methods for several measures for social inclusion and access to the world of work aimed at families, workers, and businesses, among which the Inclusion Allowance stands out.

Everything you need to know about citizen's income
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The Inclusion Allowance is defined as "a national measure to combat poverty, vulnerability, and social exclusion among vulnerable groups through social inclusion, training, employment, and active labor market policies" (Ministry of Labor and Social Policies 2023). Recipients are families with at least one member with a disability, a minor, at least 60 years of age, or in a disadvantaged situation enrolled in a local health and social care program certified by the public administration.

What can I benefit from inclusion assessment?

A family member eligible for employment benefits, supported by the relevant employment services, who refuses a job offer with certain characteristics without justification will be penalized with the loss of the benefit. Specifically, if the offer in question is permanent (either full-time or part-time, provided it is no less than 60% of full-time hours), there are no distance restrictions within the country unless the family includes children under the age of fourteen. If the offer is fixed-term, the workplace must be no more than 80 kilometers from home or reachable within 120 minutes by public transportation.

The financial benefit consists of a family income supplement of up to €6 per year (€7.560,00 per year under certain circumstances), plus a possible rental contribution for the property where the family resides, equal to the annual rent, up to a maximum of €3.360,00 per year, paid for a maximum of 18 months, renewable for an additional 12 months.

The data available so far regarding the reform in question allow us to draw some insights into some trends underway since July 2023, when the gradual transition to the Citizen's Income began. We will discuss these in detail in the next section.

Why are subsidy recipients dropping?

We cannot yet make an in-depth comparison between a four-year measure, such as the Citizen's Income (RdC) , and one that began in January of this year. However, we can provisionally consider the latest available data on the two measures, noting that there has been a decline in beneficiaries, coinciding with the increased requirements for obtaining the benefit. In December 2023, in fact, the number of recipient households receiving the Citizen's Income (RdC)/Pensione di Cittadinanza (Citizen's Pension) totaled 722 (INPS 2024), while data from March 2024 indicates approximately 500.000 beneficiaries of the AdI (AdI). The decline, moreover, confirms a trend that has been underway since July 2023, when, as a result of the reduction of the maximum duration of the benefit to seven months in 2023 following the budget law of that year, the number of recipient households dropped from 1,7 million in 2022 to just over one million (INPS 2024).

Despite this, this has not coincided with a decline in public spending: the reform that established the AdI provides for an allocation to finance it (along with the Support for Training and Work and incentives for hiring beneficiaries by businesses) that is even higher than that originally established to finance the RdC and the PdC, and is also incremental with a ten-year forecast (Dagnino et al. 2023). In fact, government programs contain no plans to eliminate subsidies to combat poverty and social exclusion, but rather a desire to select beneficiaries by directly influencing their eligibility requirements.

The universalistic principle

The reform, in fact, derogates from the universalistic principle , which should guarantee individuals and families with an income below a certain threshold the right to receive adequate economic benefits regardless of their age, gender, occupation, and place of residence (Russo 2024). In doing so, it places Italy as an exception in the EU landscape, counter-trend with recent recommendations from the European Commission (2022), which identifies minimum income policies as the "fundamental tool in achieving the strategic objective of reducing 15 million people at risk of poverty and exclusion by 2030" (Busilacchi 2023). To date, the number of households in absolute poverty in Italy is approximately 2,2 million, equal to approximately 8,3% of the total (Alliance against Poverty 2024).

As of January 26, 2024, INPS had accepted only 287.704 applications for the new benefit, compared to 117.461 rejected due to lack of eligibility. These figures are extremely low, even for a measure that has just been launched, and it is unclear whether legislators will intervene, perhaps by redefining the eligibility requirements. The risk, if no action is taken, is an increase in the poverty rate among the working population, in a country like ours that is already among the worst in this respect among OECD countries (2024). A slide toward a worsening scenario, therefore, is absolutely not desirable: it is unclear, however, whether this danger has actually been understood by the government, and consequently what we can expect for the future of social policies.

The new conditions for accessing the contribution

The reason for the decline in beneficiaries of the new subsidy could be explained by the introduction of certain conditions for employable beneficiaries who are not caring (Dagnino et al. 2023). The description of the subsidy, in fact, particularly emphasizes its employment-related dimension : active labor market policies are elevated to the role of "a mere tool for emancipating those in difficulty" (ibid., 119) and are placed on the same level as the economic and social welfare dimension. In doing so, "it seems ... to reiterate the different scope of beneficiaries ... clarifying unequivocally that the pool of potential beneficiaries ... is made up of individuals belonging to families who, in addition to their disadvantaged economic condition ... present other disadvantages that make them uniquely deserving of greater protection."

Therefore, it is no longer just the income criterion that is taken into consideration: the so-called Meloni reform relegates poverty-fighting policies to categoricality , the principle according to which welfare benefits are accessible, even if the adverse event against which the social protection scheme is designed occurs, only if one belongs to a specific category deserving of protection (Sacchi et al. 2023).

Preconditions for unfair conditions?

By doing so, however, it creates the conditions for a series of unfair conditions to arise: for example, a single person aged 60 or over can receive the benefit without conditions, provided they have an income of €6 or less, while a laid-off adult couple under the age of 60 who have no income are not eligible for the measure (Dagnino et al. 2023). The risk is that the use of family-based access criteria may lead to the perception that caring for young children or the elderly is incompatible with work commitments, while people with school-age children do not face difficulties balancing work and life.

inclusion check
Here is the INPS website for the application

In this way, the reform fails both to address the issue of conciliation services and to improve the contextual aspects that impact individuals' actual employability. On the one hand, it undermines the recipients' opportunities for finding work, as, by virtue of their family responsibilities, they appear automatically exempt from the conditions. On the other hand, "those who—not having such responsibilities—have no "excuses" for not (trying to) re-enter the labor market" (ibid., 107) are individually held accountable for their own work placement.

The workfare nature of the reform

Second, the Employment Decree envisages a drastically more restrictive revision of the rules governing adequate provision in Italian labor and social policies. In this regard, the workfare nature of the reform is evident, as it is part of a social system based on an exchange between the welfare benefits received by citizens and the work they provide for the community (Modica Scala 2022).

In social policies to combat unemployment, this principle is often presented as an alternative to the simple and passive provision of cash benefits (Colombo 2015). The critical issue here, however, lies in the ways in which it is implemented, which appear to be in complete contradiction with any objective of "real and realistic" work inclusion (Sacchi et al. 2023, 109), given that it would imply that an adult family member with parental responsibilities would be willing to relocate for work regardless of job title and salary, even if their children are minors, even if they are over 14. As Colombo (2015, 26) observes, "workfare can only assert itself in a grey area between labor policies and anti-poverty policies, between assistance and insurance.

A space, permitted in part by the withdrawal of public responsibilities in social reproduction, which responds to the need for a precarious workforce and risks reviving the rhetoric of moral criminalization of poverty and unemployment”. This latter risk is also identified by the aforementioned Sacchi et al. (2023, 109), who identify in the reform a sort of “punitive will towards recipients … [which] betrays a sort of underlying theme … the distrust in the ability of individuals to exploit the opportunities for growth and regeneration of skills offered by work inclusion paths, as well as the distrust in the capacity of the public actor to offer similar opportunities”.

Inclusion allowance: a measure that needs to be reviewed

Academic studies conducted so far provide us with an extremely negative assessment of the measure, albeit partial given its recent entry into force, as it is accused of treating similar situations of poverty in radically different ways, and of providing for "severe, restrictive and often punitive conditions ... inspired by the crystallization of criteria of merit based on the attribution of roles in society: being 60 years old, having very young children, or having many, without taking into account the different living conditions" (Sacchi et al 2023, 113).

Essentially, the reform is accused of failing to promote the right to care and work-life balance, which it should contribute to as part of active labor market policies. Furthermore, as already mentioned, it is also a partial support for the poor, given the stringent requirements for accessing it. In light of this, it is clear that, as formulated and implemented in this initial phase, this measure needs to be significantly revised. The Alliance Against Poverty (2024), on this point, has officially urged the government to collaborate on improving the contribution, thus restoring its principle of selective universalism. To date, however, no response has been received.

Andrea Gruttad'Auria

References

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