New poverty and new social networks - Forum
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New poverty and new social networks - Forum
speakers: CRISTIANO GORI, FRANCA MAINO, ROSSELLA MICCIO, NATALIE WESTERBARKEY introduced by MASSIMO BALDINI coordinated by PAOLA PICA Albeit incomplete, the citizen’s and emergency income schemes have represented a safeguard against our present economic emergency. The voluntary sector has responded in a widespread manner, from below, to the evolution of new forms of poverty among women, children and the elderly. A proposal for creating different instruments when drawing up a new network of safety and social inclusion. http://www.festivaleconomia.it
good morning and welcome welcome to the discussion forum that has been curated by the economist of voice dot info economist info here we're talking about topics related to this festival as well as to other topic as we have seen in the last two days that are very topical these days so new poverties new social networks and we've seen that during the pandemic there has been an increase in the number of new of the so-called new poor one million according to the institute italian institute of research is that so these figures can be traced back to something like a third world war but we have seen with professor gory whom i will introduce recently we have discussed these topics by and large also on the courier de la sera the newspaper i work for and we would like to see what are the new networks what are the new networks made of the ra instruments made available by the state and we will talk about this instrument more thoroughly and then there are some people that are neither with the state nor with the market so we've seen that there are now and that there are some actors that are very important in society and i'm referring to the so-called third sector networks let me introduce our guests and how we're organized professor baldini who is sitting at the far left is the economista de la voce who will introduce the topic that we will then discuss all together unfortunately we don't have much time we have one hour one rn 10 including questions from the floor so professor baldini who is a professor at the university studied the modern era gemini will give us an introduction shortly and then we will have rosella micho rosella micho is the president of emergency and i would like to thank you very much for being at the festival and in particular thank you for participating to this panel discussion so the question is why wasn't she invited when talking about health care well we will explain this shortly and then professor gorey who is a professor at the university of toronto so he's from this cd and he's the author of a text that is fundamental for us also combating poverty with la terza publishers and thank you of course to later for organizing these festival and for providing this forum discussion now we also have remotely we also have professor franca mano who teaches political sciences at the statale university milan and is the director of laboratories on the second wealth welfare so a very well-known personality in the sector and she's a member of the scientific committee for the alliance against poverty so welcome and then professor westerbach hi professor westerbachy can you hear us so thank you for being with us and professor westerbach deals or is here as an expert of financial education financial education which is a great tool to combat poverty so to combat the fact that we are going towards poverty she is vice chair of the investor education committee of the ifama is this correct please please investor education platform and effect so i work for e international who is the global asset manager with six thank you very much we will further go into the details later on and professor valdini please you have the floor good thank you very much and good morning everyone um i've been asked to give you an introduction concerning the general topic of this meeting of course there would be so much to say and i'm sure i'm not going to be able to say everything but new poverty and new social networks the welfare state in more general terms now thinking about the title of the festival this year the state is coming back so in considering the welfare state as well well we know that italian state has never fled away the social spending public social spending has increased remarkably in the 50s 60s and 70s but it also increased of in the last 20 years and after the year 2000 all the social spending items have increased as a potential percentage of the gdp so pensions family and validity all of these items have grown remarkably so there's a strong demand for social expenditure for many different reasons the main one is that the italian economy has not been growing for a long time now productivity is not growing either we're the only country which in 2019 couldn't make up for the per pro capital income of 2007 that is before the 2008 crisis then we had a new covered crisis with a gdp full of some 10 percent and for sure in this context we see that the number of families that are in need is increasing so this is the first topic that i would like to discuss with you so how have the economic conditions of families changed both before and after the covert crisis what are the effects of the new demands vis-a-vis our welfare system so and how has the welfare system reacted to the new needs expressed by society and we know that changes in the welfare state have been going on for a long time now so it is not um that things were stuck before the coveted crisis and then changed let's go back some 15 years ago or more than that there was no a such a thing as a minimum income or basic income subsidies have been subject to a reform twice during the last two years so it's a continuous continuously changing process and within this scheme we've had the covet crisis which has generated new needs so basic income has only been here for a couple of years slightly more than two years but that was not a sufficient measures with it to introduce in new temporary measures the emergency income then we have had many bonuses uh being utilized as a mentoring measure to make up for various difficult situations and conditions and in 2020 um 1 600 new aids schemes for families or enterprises have been put in place an enormous number of aids which gives you the dimension of these sizes that is totally different to the 2008 crisis when we had this austerity so nobody's saying now that we have to go back straight to rebalancing the public balance sheet or budget so what is happening in italian society and italian economy and what are the needs going further and the second question is how is the welfare system performing and how should it change we don't have an ideal welfare system 25 years ago a well-known economist anthony atkinson wrote an article he was also a guest of this festival and so his article was actually a question is welfare state an obstacle to economic growth so the burden of proof had to be provided by those who had to defend the welfare state from being charged of the hampering economic growth but actually the welfare state is not doesn't have the objective of favoring economic growth but rather to protect people from life risks be it disease old age poverty or other situations well the welfare the question remains as well for an obstacle to growth or can it be a something that favors economic growth and atkinson said well it depends on how the welfare stair is constructed we could have a harmful health first welfare staff for economic growth or the country rather as it invests in favor of the human capital of our young people is in favor of health or goes in favor of health and protects you if you want to risk in some activities and know that something could go wrong but our welfare system is very much in balance towards pensions and money transfers services and also in the case of the basic ins income money and direct money transferred to families has been carried out immediately where areas the service is not just in relation to carve it is still stuck where it was so the problem problems with covet of course pushed much more the money transfers side of the these whole story so we need to change the welfare system we have inherited from the past and think of new social risks so welfare system that should be much um fast in reacting when things change and when the new prospects of the families and the people change due to a lockdown or due to the shutdown of a major company or due to a earthquake or any other event we also have new technologies that aid us to identify new possibilities new services and to intervene um rapidly so we need to reconsider and reconfigure the system we have inherited from the past and also consider how to the specific covet crisis can produce new changes and the risk is that after all those events in next autumn we will discussing once again the issue of our pension schemes and so we will have to think once again what to do to make up for the problems we have with the pension schemes and another problem is the relationship between private and public welfare systems and in all countries are investing more and more due to the crisis in the public uh welfare state with biden the united states have decided to not to go for the monetary transfer but rather to act in favor of the same solutions adopted in europe but in general our welfare public system suffers from a few limitations the first one the the burden that is dominating the future of public welfare is aging aging poses new uh requests for hate aid both for pensions and health care system and produces new political majorities that are in favor of such an investment so it becomes more difficult to intervene in order to make up for the new social risks on top of the old ones that need to be tackled then are dead public debt which is also a major burden and can limit the public welfare action that seems to be unbalanced towards monetary investments can what is the relationship between public and private uh welfare how can the third sector offer services and meet the demands that the public system cannot cater for for all the reasons i mentioned so i believe that we have a lot of topics to discuss and this concludes my presentation thank you very much perfect thank you very much congratulations you remained within the time limits mr gory you are now involved let's talk about the national instruments have they worked what happened during the pandemic and what are the prospects for the future scientists uh stated that we are in the age of pandemic so oh this is not going to be the last shock thank you very much let's start from the key words of poverty the first is growth poverty has been on the increase constantly since 2008. the past year is not an exception these are trends which have been worsened by the pandemic but they have been there much longer a second point in this time of fragility is that a poverty is cross-sectional till to 2008 it used to affect certain groups now it's affecting other groups who used to feel safe it used to be in the south now it's uh up in the north in the past uh it was on the unemployed now it's enough to have one child and you might be poor then the rapidity of impoverishment it is true that italians have assets and heritage but there is uh they are inequality they are unheavily distributed so it takes just a short time to get poorer how can we assess the measures to be used speaking about the role of the state we have to separate quality and quantity uh at the time of the covet indeed in the absence of the measures adopted poverty would have rocketed we don't know to what extent but it would have increased then the quantity of funds made available is good we had the ordinary measure since 2019 of the citizenship income there used to be another system before but with less funds now the present income is well financed and then emergency income and the municipal tickets we can call them vouchers what are the lights and the shadows professor baldini conducted good research half of the poverty does not receive the citizenship income and in the north there is a large group of people not covered and also the family with many members there are many families who are not protected one-third of the people getting the citizenship income is because of the structure of the measure and not because they are poor the main measure the emergency income was taken by four people entitled out of ten because it was very difficult to apply and obtain emergency income so the the response is given uh gerd but the quality of funds is not enough in a couple of years if we are reinvited here will be here to speak about the next coming back i.e budget constraints and the situation will be different i either won't be such a high public expenditure what is the society of the future the risk of poverty is larger and larger at all levels and will have budget constraints coming back it will be key to channel resources to those who are really in need and this is the challenge the citizenship income provides many funds but does not solve many other problems so will the italian government the present and the future be able to uh consider the society and say that it is necessary to help people who were not supported and no longer help those who had the aid will institutions be able to do that it's not so easy but in a situation where there are budget constraints if i'm not able to move money i would not be able to support those who are badly in need so the next challenge is to channel resources to those who really need them we will be able to respond by adding and subtracting so the state will have to work on the quality and not only on quantity if we were to say the worst concern we are not no longer able to make complicated decisions we are just asking for money but this is uh when we say we have not enough money this is usually the time when you don't want to make difficult decisions so we adopted simple solutions and we'll have to get more difficult solutions there is a final point you said the coming back of the state there are many sectors of the welfare such as poverty and children the state is not coming back the state is late so we will need to be more indulgent on present members of government and less indulgent on the governance of the past 40 years but instead there is a lack of services yes because if we have been discussing uh the fight against poverty 20 years ago it takes a lot of time to hire staff to provide services it will take years had we adopted measures against poverty at the beginning of the year 2000 we would be in a better position uh then another solution what is called a single check for families with children an issue debated since the 80s when the demographic crisis was already there then the support to non-independent elderly persons so there are new social risks which are not covered children people not as self-sufficient in poverty we are doing the right things but at the wrong time we are late so there are so many poor's not enough new babies born and so on doing the right things in the wrong moment is a bit more difficult in these discussions i usually you know accept criticism against the government but we learned in this time to reconsider the choices made starting from the 80s in order to allocate the liabilities and responsibilities to the different generations well stieglitz said that neoliberalism is over uh it failed the damages that we see today yeah you're right is the fact that um the political choices made were drawn wrong inequality is a choice unfortunately i would like to give the flaw to rosell mitchell you are the president of the emergency association so uh what about including those who are excluded well first of all thank you very much for inviting us here we have always been dealing with health that was something in a way mandatory that of caring people who you know were affected by the health crisis and then by the economic and social crisis which was a consequence of the pandemic i agree on the key words which were mentioned earlier on indeed it is true these conditions are there we have seen these problems in this year during which we have supported those we call the new poor we started from the city of milan which is the headquarters of emergency and then it was scattered throughout italy with different methods and different approaches and at times we discovered very painful situations of people who were really suffering on the one hand and we have a project that is called nobody is to be left out i mean if you want to be a united single society we have to involve everyone so nobody should log behind so what is the organization doing so based on the immediate response i locked down delivering food at home to those who were locked down we also discovered that there were many people who remained unemployed alone elderly people or families who were able to manage primary needs and who all of a sudden were excluded the public response was ignited required simply because they were not able to identify those really in need and these people had no way to communicate their new needs so we invented this very simple project we deliver food and also sanitary products cleansing and things and so on to these people i mean those people who were excluded by the from the benefits of the uh traditional welfare system and that was because of a number of reasons many welfare actions are delivered based on the official income of these people and many had lost their income all of a sudden and were not known by the welfare system so we also involved a young person's associations in rome and milan dealing with circular economy and who were very familiar with the local community so we identified a number of people which we do not call beneficiaries i like to call them persons and we started with a very clear message to them and the institutions and the municipal authorities and so on the message is this this is a support which will not last forever we will be monitoring uh this support checking that the prerequisites still are there are the most vulnerable groups we told them we will do a monthly assessment to continue or discontinue the support a second message was for the institutions that is this is a time of emergency but the target is to help these people uh to come back to their ranks ia to find a job and so on and indeed i must admit that it was pretty successful besides the differences between the north and the south of the country in terms of needs in the north for example having a house or a home has a major impact in terms of spending the income in the south this is not so serious because they have family networks in the south there is a problem to receive health care there is a problem of access okay we'll come back to that but let me tell you the the triage system that uh you use uh really function yes um i mean you said i i know classifying you as a poor person i want to know who you are you are what are your needs do you need to have food supplied you are your children are learning from home and so on yes then what do you provide in these packages we'll speak of that later can you briefly summarize what we just mentioned the second is it functioning is it not um i'm turning actually but there's no point in me turning because i have a screen also in front of me to see you so what about the known functioning of a stress test if ever which has been going on since march 2020 well good morning everyone and i must say that the words of the previous speakers have already told us a lot in terms of the events we have had to face during the pandemic and also in terms of spotting poor people or people at risk of poverty and new poverty as well as cristiano guri mentioned earlier this poverty is not just poverty material poverty anymore it is multifaceted and it needs different approaches that are multi-dimensional hence requiring very different forms of energy and the contribution of different actors not just the public institutions but also private players in the non-profit area in the third sector as we call it and that is so broad and so different but i believe that some answers have also come from the production sphere so if the topic is how should we care for poor people in the new poverty then we have to consider different levels we have the national measures and the basic income as well as the rem the emergency income introduced during the crisis in 2020 as a response to the carved pandemic and also considering resources made available from the gov government that have been cascaded down to the local governments this was the first expression of this first crisis that has generated a poverty crisis a food crisis and i'm thinking of the tickets that have been provided to the families for the purpose of purchasing food as a basic aid and also we have to consider how the regions the local governments have to react and the neighborhoods the regions the local authorities have been capable of reacting timely to phase one and two of the crisis well at the same time you have to consider how we will proceed from now going further because you know the first responses were a kind of a springboard for catering for material needs but now we have to see how these people can be properly reabsorbed into the labor market how to care for fragile children and the families and so on so i believe that partially the response to the challenge that has been highlighted here is shifting attention from the national to the local level to the different regions that i believe can be become and have partially already done so that they can become laboratories for social innovation and for social investment which means that this welfare system does not only apply to a need but they become a an engine for further development going back to what valdini was saying earlier so there is a problem here because at the regional at the neighborhood health level we can't evaluate their ability to react and respond only considering the spending their spending capacity as it is quite low compared to the investments made by the state we're talking about slightly more than 7 billion euros 0.4 of the gdp but the way in which we have to reconsider this local areas is the uh possibility of enacting collaborations with multi with many players hence enhancing the value coming from non-public entities so at the local level we have seen even before the pandemic crisis and as a response to the 2007 and 2008 crisis that public and non-public actors have been becoming organized within networks thanks to funding and external forms of supports that have given them a chance to work together to experiment with the new interventions and to try and co-produce responses and i'm not of course trying to hide from you that there are other challenges that have to be faced at the local level so the problems aren't just there at the local level but we know that these risks can enable us to cater for the problems at the local level and i know we don't have much time but amongst the problems we have is the um local fragmentation the national fragmentation so looking at the local entities as areas that should overcome this fragmentation is not something we can establish at the national level then there are different differentiation in the treatment or certain matters some areas are better equipped with instruments to do so and then the dispersion of resources we know that some resources may be provided by the pioneer resilience plan recovery and resilience they provide resources that if utilized well can help us resolve the problems in a systemic manner so we have to avoid wasting these resources and another challenge that is before us is the risk that emergency responses that in many cases have been effective cannot sustain the challenge of sustainability and cannot provide a certain level of continuity to the interventions adopted until now so i'm referring in more detail to the fact that administrations do have to invest in coming months and coming years and i would like to mention another thing do you agree with mr gorey when saying that we used to think uh to thinking that poor people are mainly in the south but ant poor people also in the northern part of the country also as paldini mentioned before this all started well before the vandemic you know switching off the lights of the milan fair and exhibitions of the salon del mobile the furniture exhibition and of course this has caused that many precarious workers have become jobless so in the north there's a big problem with the new poor and new poverty so maybe this is also something we should face during our conversation professor westerbach why don't we close with you this first twerk do you uh do you follow translation or do you understand italian thank you for excuse me sorry for interrupting you but we have a problem with the connection we can't hear you sorry see if we can resolve this see if we can resolve this problem with the connection um maybe you can be with us at the end of the procedure so sorry we will reconnect with you at the end of this presentation so we will continue translating and we will go back to professor gory so we have been talking about new poverty young people of um draft contribution to be given to the families but there's something that has been probably neglected and i'm talking about those proposals that have been partially included in the recovery plan and i'm referring to those welfare options devoted to the elderly population yes thank you the care offered to non-self-sufficient elderly is something that was badly needed because we have been talking about this national reform since the 90s and in the p r plan this was not included as part of the plan during the county government so we have put forward a proposal that we have submitted to minister orlando and esperanza and they have actually evaluated it increased the investment levels and the reform will have to be adopted or approved of by the year 2023 this is one thing that i would like to maybe go back to in the future so care to the elderly i would like to mention three topics concerning the um allowance for elderly people so maybe in two years time you will invite us to debate the topic of the soul or single allowance for the elderly people it is part of a reform package that has have come in very slowly so the single allowance should increase funding for economic support with the families with children it simplifies things because we only have one single allowance and there are no differences between employees and autonomous workers so the objective of better supporting families that have children well that objective has been attained but there's yet another objective that is very much linked with this which is to increase the birth rate to make the birth rate uh go up again which is going to be a very complicated objective so it's very hard to attain it and the problem has been known since the 80s and which started back then it would have been easier to attain that objective because you know if i'm optimistic about the future maybe i will invest on my children in this economic phase there's no such thing and the second reason is that for public policies to encourage me to have more children then it means that the population will have to be certain of being aided by the state it's a long process so as a minimum it will require a lot of time now this is the first and very important point during this historical phase we have to do the right thing in the best possible way to obtain results the second point i would like to propose in ballini as written it very clearly on his uh newspaper for what for which children is this allowance for who is the welfare state therefore well it's this allowance should it go to families with children and should be distributed according to the economic status of the family to the um and i think that the debate on this topic is emblematic of the welfare system we have in front of us so there is a universalist option so you could provide the same amount to the same uh to to to all the population to all the families with kids or adopt a more selective stance and concentrate resources and give more to the um poorest people among that population bracket of course in favor of universalism we have at least two um things to mention first of all all children are the same they're all equal baldini said if you don't treat it as a universalist thing then there is a society that is funding the welfare and others who receive the wealth for um but that will reduce consensus towards welfare in future respect because also medium and high brackets have to receive aids from the welfare system but there are also arguments in favor of selectivity for example the diffusion or of inequalities and the fact that society is moving backwards you don't only need policies in favor of the very last people in the scale but you need measures for each and every one within that scale so i would like to mention that the debate on this single uh allowance should make us ponder the key question of the future use who is this social state therefore and this is for sure a topical issue and there's the not there's another element that i haven't coupled very well so is it good is it positive to link policies in favor of women to the policies in favor of the families with kids so this this is surely a very important topic i mean if the problem comes from the women the show women women are those who care for children there are three things for the family children the economic allowance kindergarten and we are still lagging behind uh family leaves for example uh uh that one is the one allowing children and uh those who are in care to be supported through family leaves indeed there is also an issue on the availability of funds i mean we have progressed on those who accept that a family is in charge of uh caring and that has to be supported in there there is an issue of culture in terms of labor market and so on anyway the welfare system that we have to implement is one that see to it that policies to support family which children are that concerned with the issue of support to women thank you very much that was a a proposal made by alessina in one of the past festivals and was published on the caribbean this is nature back to you on the model that you have put to the test speaking about northern italy indeed it is true that you have an important headquarter in milan indeed starting a project from milan and providing aid and support everywhere for inclusion all over italy well indeed we have been active since 2006 where uh mobile and not mobile centers we have realized that we have an increasing number of italians who are in need of support and who asked for our services is this suddenly you know these appearance are the uh abilities and capabilities of persons who were not the very last but who were the last but one or the who indeed fell in absolute need and they had no tools to manage that they also were not you know they didn't have the frame of mind to do that in northern italy there were people included in our program who were not using the citizenship income or other forms of support i mean i realize that it's also difficult to accept and then make that you are a poor person a couple of months ago i was told that we had telephone calls from young freelancers who said we managed up to now but we can no longer manage lawyers and things like that indeed three lances who were no longer able to go on they had no support at all they just wanted to remain independent from their families of origin or their parents so the question we are dealing with is this how can we continue to support these people in a different way and we hope we could indeed look at the end of this year to fully implement our no one is left out project so that we can continue to support those in need with a target to include people and help citizens speak with the institutions so poverty has to be identified from the bottom i mean it's like a door-to-door approach yes this is what we did also because we were active at community level and we had more time to devote to these people that is a key element i involved and that's why i don't call them beneficiaries you have to take the time to listen to them to identify their needs to talk with them so that we can identify solutions together it's a a limitation affecting public institutions as we saw in healthcare at community level and that emerged during our project to support the new poors the interaction among different fields volunteers non-profit public institutions is a key element we can be a sort of bridge to help different systems grow together and develop a new one this is a indeed these are the uh different partners of this alliance miss miner uh what about uh the north and the idea of a new alliance among the actors sorry i continued to turn towards the screen thank you very much going back to your words indeed poverty is to be identified from the bottom but things would be much easier if the data bases of the country could be talking to each others so that the data could be made available to the local governments so that we could have a much more integrated approach to people and their needs i i think that an investment could be made nationally to do that to connect to different databases in line with rethinking the use of new digital tools as for your question cristiano is right statistical data confirm that poverty is on the increase in the north it was already increasing before the pandemic maybe the north was able to react more promptly to the challenge why because we have institutions and society organizations who are active and i'm referring to uh social networks new governance models which started uh have started working in 2012 when there was the peak of the financial crisis that indeed was also supported by uh bank foundations community foundations corporate foundations who invested in supporting and creating the networks i'm not saying that these are the networks who have to be the only actors i suggest that as it happened in the center north areas we should involve all the actors because it is there that these networks should be supported and also to spend and allocate them correctly against poverty going back to the new poverties i think that investing new welfare structures hinged on services in order to offer services instead of funds should be targeted in balancing the burden of care in favor of the elderly disabled children and so on investing today in a new welfare state putting the services at the center and also investing on the matching between work and family means investing taking on board how people change throughout their lives needs are different they should be identified at the beginning i.e investing on children on young persons who should be able to enter the labor market then adulthood and also supporting those who are aging we have to be aware that the fact that the elderly are not sufficient at a certain moment in time is one of the consequences of the uh fact that life expectancy is longer and people lose their autonomy after years last but not least the changes in family structures that is uh the increased number of uh single people and people who live alone that should be tackled with in synergy between the center and the communities thank you very much now we are told that business westerback is back good afternoon you can hear me now okay okay perfect okay very good and i'm sorry about the technology i will keep my points uh very succinct to the in the interest of time so i agree with what the panelists covered and wanted to add that now with the pandemic we see the gap widening between the rich and the poor because many people that were in lower income jobs like transport have hospitality tourism they may have not been able to work and they had to live off their savings so especially for that population it's incredibly important that they think about their long-term savings um to avert poverty in the later age the question is how to do that the first is investor education is really important at every stage of someone's life it is according to the oecd proven that the earlier we start with children at school with investor education the more successful they will be able to build financial health um throughout their life cycle but even within each step of the life it's important to of course refresh that knowledge on finance and one very common misconception is that most people think they have to be rich before they can actually save or invest but that's wrong even with people that have a lower income it's important that their mindset shifts that they realize even with small amounts every month that they save they can build a better financial future for themselves and uh here there's a second misconception that most people think they can save money on a bank account and then they'll be fine later in life but the point is we know because of inflation because of the current low interest rate environment it's very important to achieve a mind shift with regards to that point that people invest in investment funds for the long term then they participate in the growth especially now with all the eu recovery funds we want the retail sector to be able to participate in the next growth phase and they will only be able to do that if they invest small amounts of money into these types of newly created funds that are long-term and infrastructure funds and they have a low risk but they have a long-term return and last but not least that it is important to incentivize people not just for their own financial health but also to use the fact that consumers are very interested in the environment and in saving the planet and in um having better communities so a very popular theme today is sustainable finance we want people to participate in sustainable funds and with that we believe we can mitigate some of the threat of poverty at all social layers thank you very much thank you um thank you i would like to ask you a question professor lizard a common friend of ours supports the idea that financial education should be should not come as a top uh to bottom approached so top down approach as it happens today but should rather be developed closer to the people so everywhere also in leisure spaces or at the hairdresser or in theaters so it should be there where people live and act absolutely i 100 agree and i wanted to also add the importance of technology nowadays because everyone or most people um regardless of their wealth now have access to to the internet and it needs to be more in our day-to-day life and from a public policy perspective we see that the european commission has just launched an initiative within their capital markets union a cmu action plan and they want to create a framework so they want to help member states including italy to do more um that is accessible to the people that have no major finance background for example the um ivas instituto per la has a new education project under the oecd but also the italian government has launched something i think it's pronounced que loche so they have a website um where people can find information on savings on the first jobs on buying a home and planning a family but i fully agree it needs to be around us the fact that financial um financial issues matter when you go to the supermarket the hairdresser not just in school not just in a class but it needs to be in the in the tv news what is however important we as um fidelity and as industry we do a lot to inform our clients and we had a specific seminar especially for women in finance because women have a greater need to plan than perhaps men because statistically they live much longer so they need to plan for a longer life and hence finance often they have income gaps because of child care or care for the elderly and third um often they don't earn as much as men so they need to give it much more thought and they have so to say um a tailored um approach to their own finance because we're talking about on our panel especially the needs for children for women and for the elderly so it's it's very important in financial education to target specific groups for their individual needs and just one final remark that i think is very important is we as industry we do a lot of initiatives uh to inform our clients or the public but effectively only the public sector so the schools the governments um and the local municipalities can deliver financial education in an independent and in a holistic way so we can we our contribution is very important but for example fidelity would of course talk about asset management whereas other institutions might cover more insurance or they might cover more banking hence the role of the public sector to provide investor education is increasingly important more than ever thank you very much yes this is very important especially concerning the literacy the financial literacy of women and in fact especially in italy the face of poverty is all very often coincides of the with the face of a woman with a ninkam gap and with children of course so thank you very much for your contribution and let me repeat the name of the website in fact the fact is matter of fact you said it very well the site is website is called so it's very well conceived and designed go take a look at it because it contains a lot of practical information concerning the financial choices we make throughout our life so everything is a financial decision or choice whatever decision we make in a phase of our life is always a financial choice and may rescue us from as living into poverty so i would like to thank you but maybe we have time for a couple of questions from the floor but i would like to thank the speakers for being so keen in keeping to the time allocated to them indeed i would like to ask you a question article 53 of the constitution is our 112 number is the emergency number what i heard today concerning public employment is here but mr gory has enlightened me so if we don't abide by article 53 we will have always less income and less services this is something that nobody mentions because we have a press or also a public and private tv that has too many news to communicate professor boyer in 2018 i talked to him he was the chairman of the national institute for uh social security and 11 billion are missing from the social security funds nobody ever mentioned this we always have to do the direct or indirect taxes concerning private social security contributions 2018 nobody mentions anything so what is the question please would you like to ask the question well i would like you to talk about 53 and 118. i live in a region with the best healthcare system ever after the regional lamberty well the region trentino is for sure the best one veneto maybe well then according to the present tv veneto comes after lombardi in terms of hospital care eight years ago i was informed that emergency was also present in mestre but some people say people have to command and do things where they belong to so baroni has to go to africa not to mestre ashy so you promised you would be brief instead yes because the municipalities are sustaining social security burden that is enormous they should have the possibility of imposing the tax on real estate well i didn't expect this you were saying very rightly this is another question there are many transfers but we don't have services professor gauri was saying that services need time to be delivered and of course the results will only be visible in future years my question is is this real are we actually designing the services in the case of the bay's income we it seems that there's no interest in expanding active policies would you like to reply this question who would like to reply is there anybody here or professor bondini would you like to answer the question yes concerning the second question it is true it is a very difficult moment as far as the basic income was concerned we had to contrast material economic poverty so it was very successful on that side we lost 1 million jobs and the possibility to include therefore a limited number of people into this scheme and the law prevented and the employment centers were shut down during the pandemic so we had quite a few problems but efforts are being done and in this special moment where we have no budget constraints i hope that some further steps forward will be made and hopefully also in line with the recovery because there's no employment demand from the enterprises it is very difficult to have active people on the market the major dilemma we're faced with is that on the one side we have an increase in demand for aids the number of families and that are running difficulties are very many and they need an immediate straightforward help then we have the structural systems that need a structural reform that will only be providing results in the medium to long term so it's very hard to resist to those pressures and to provide answers to the legitimate requests for help and aid and utilize resources for those services that will only be effective in the course of a long time you know providing a money incentive is easier we know that but we know that pressure and votes go in a certain direction that is not always coinciding with the rest we have some is that data saying that some southern italy regions have the lowest employment rates as compared to the rest of europe not even spain or greece have this very low number of women employed and the same applies to turkey only the eastern part of turkey the most backward turkish region has a lower number of women in the employment sector so it is up to us to ask politicians to implement policies that are in favor of the human of women labor and not just immediate money aids i would also like to say that we have been in marguera since 2010 and ours is not a an intervention that should replace the national service but should rather become integrated with it and facilitate the access to the labor market for the very many people who are not yet working and some parameters are still linked with richness or better with poverty so we try to accompany italian foreign citizens towards working our first person the first person we had in marghera was an italian who had lost his job had problems with eating and slow swallow up he had no money to pay for a dense dentist and he had no possibility to pay for dentists through the national health care system so we had to entertain a constant dialogue with the public offices to respond to his needs so this is what we have been doing since 2010 so also in the deep north not just in the deep south yes absolutely we were saying before that it is true we're doing the right things at a too late stage in time so the nursery plan the self-association same measures as well as the single allowance ordinary current allowance as a role as sign of it so there's only one thing you can check or double check whether a reform is functioning or not you know it's a technical thing if you are doing the usual things then of course it means you protect those who can make their voice heard louder but of course the public sphere considers those who are more disadvantaged in a certain system so autonomous workers self-employed and likes and i would like to also mention that we have the issue of universalism and selectivity as valdini mentioned before so you would concentrate the non-recurrent allowance on the lower bracket of our population but what about the higher bracket of the population why should i fund things or measures where from i receive nothing at all so maybe this is due to social response or is linked with social responsibility i don't want to get to the point where we talk about the one percent taxation but the the people who are at the top could give back something to society we can hear you there i am i'd like to comment on the second question you know we have the citizenship of basic income which is uh indeed quite an achievement because that was not there two years ago but that is not the perfect measure and it ha it is having critical effects so the government should be brave enough to do something to simplify some procedures in order to improve the access for the poor's and for the new pores which were mentioned before the idea is to activate from the bottom the provision of services and not only of money there is a lot to be done on that i'm not referring to pensions or schemes or i refer to other actions well thank you i shall be brief mr gauri has said that it's important to speak about a selection of actions because there is a risk of becoming poor which is increasing there is a risk for the society to go backward by watching the pandemics we have the impression that those who are at a higher risk are those who are into new inner quality conditions which were worsened by the pandemic for example the differences in access to digital infrastructure the availability of devices and those who are working and learning from home that is referred to the feature of the house where they live but also at the level of the community not only the difference between north and south but also the periphery the rural areas and the difference uh vis-a-vis the urban area and all the implications in terms of access to care do you think that is a correct interpretation or from your point of observation uh do you think that there are new inequalities or new causes for poverty that's a very good question anyone volunteering baldini it's really a good question i'm thinking of two groups first teenagers maybe they are a small percentage but if we calculate the number of people that means thousands of young teenagers who are left behind they could not learn from home there are many needs who do not study or work or search for employment so they are not working actively they do not invest in themselves that is a number which gone down in the past 15 years but it's on the rise because of the pandemic there are also people in the age of 50s according to the data the basic income usually these are people one person families who are no longer young uh they were the target they were not the target group conceived for the basic income in the past we used to think for a person of 30 years of age now not only the italian population is aging also the poor are aging so it's getting more and more difficult to support them i mean if you have a person at the age of 30 who has to be retrained is one thing but if the person is 50 indeed for many um the basic income is a form of early retirement allowance that would be a total disaster because that would mean losing human capital so there is a dual problem uh young persons uh abandoning dropping out from schools uh many uh baby boomers who are unemployed not only because of the pandemic but also for the changes in the labor market and they might be waiting for the pension and not have no incentives to find a job well as there are no other questions i i would like to conclude because we have been nice we could entertain questions from the audience thank you very much for being here thank you very much for participating actively i'd like to thank the panelists and we will meet in the afternoon we'll speak about the core of the festival i.e the hands of the state thank you goodbye you
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