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Local Welfare in Italy: Housing, Employment and Child Care

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Local Welfare in Italy: Housing, Employment and Child Care Local welfare in Italy: Housing, employment and child care Giuliana Costa and Stefania Sabatinelli Politecnico di Milano (Italy) WILCO Publication no. 02 This report is part of Work Package 2 of the research project entitled "Welfare innovations at the local level in favour of cohesion" (WILCO). WILCO aims to examine, through cross-national comparative research, how local welfare systems affect social inequalities and how they favour social cohesion, with a special focus on the missing link between innovations at the local level and their successful transfer to and implementation in other settings. The WILCO consortium covers ten European countries and is funded by the European Commission (FP7, Socio-economic Sciences & Humanities). TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. GENERAL BACKGROUND ......................................................................................................................... 3 1.1. STRUCTURE AND DEVELOPMENT OF THE WELFARE STATE........................................................................................... 3 1.2. DEGREE OF CENTRALISATION ............................................................................................................................... 4 1.3. TRENDS .......................................................................................................................................................... 5 2. THE FIELD OF HOUSING IN ITALY ............................................................................................................. 7 2.1. INTRODUCTORY BACKDROP ................................................................................................................................. 7 2.2. DEMAND AND SUPPLY........................................................................................................................................ 7 The Italian housing market, evolution of housing stocks and the role of the public sector............................ 7 Eligibility for public social housing ................................................................................................................. 9 Housing and illegally activities ..................................................................................................................... 10 2.3. STRUCTURE OF THE ADMINISTRATION.................................................................................................................. 11 The institutional architecture of the Italian social housing policy field ........................................................ 11 The support for low income tenants............................................................................................................. 12 2.4. HOUSING IN RELATION TO SOCIAL EXCLUSION ....................................................................................................... 13 Exclusion, poverty, housing distress and homelessness ............................................................................... 13 Housing and stigma...................................................................................................................................... 14 Ethnic concentration / segregation in housing............................................................................................. 14 2.5. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS................................................................................................................................... 15 Current key issues, new policy measures...................................................................................................... 15 Private and public mixed social housing: innovations with national appeal................................................ 16 Crisis and housing policies............................................................................................................................ 17 3. THE FIELD OF EMPLOYMENT ................................................................................................................. 19 3.1. DEMAND AND SUPPLY...................................................................................................................................... 19 3.2. STRUCTURE OF THE ADMINISTRATION.................................................................................................................. 22 Employment Services.................................................................................................................................... 22 Passive protection ........................................................................................................................................ 22 3.3. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS................................................................................................................................... 25 4. THE FIELD OF CHILD CARE ..................................................................................................................... 27 4.1. FAMILY POLICIES IN ITALY ................................................................................................................................. 27 Monetary support and parental leaves........................................................................................................ 27 Child care policies in Italy ............................................................................................................................. 28 Service providers .......................................................................................................................................... 31 Forms of child care supports ........................................................................................................................ 32 4.2. STRUCTURE OF THE ADMINISTRATION.................................................................................................................. 33 4.3. ACCESS OF VULNERABLE GROUPS ....................................................................................................................... 34 4.4. RECENT DEVELOPMENTS................................................................................................................................... 35 Current public debate................................................................................................................................... 35 Local innovation ........................................................................................................................................... 36 5. REFERENCES.......................................................................................................................................... 37 2 1. GENERAL BACKGROUND 1.1. Structure and development of the welfare state In the first taxonomy proposed by Esping-Andersen (1990) Italy had been classified as part of the Conservative model of welfare capitalism, characterized by a strong role of the male-breadwinner, by a supremacy of employment-based protection measures, and by a prevalence of monetary benefits as opposed to in-kind provision. Later on, literature has better defined the position of Italy as part of a "variant" of the Conservative model. Together with Spain, Portugal and Greece, Italy is currently acknowledged to form a distinct Southern European or Mediterranean welfare model (Ferrera 1996; Leibfried 1992; Esping-Andersen 1999). This model is characterized by a comparatively lower level of social expenditure, and especially a lower share of expenditure devoted to family support and struggle against poverty and social exclusion. In this model, even wider responsibility about income redistribution and care of inactive individuals (children, elderly, disabled) is left to the family. The paradox is that in the so-called "Familistic" countries families are not sustained by generous monetary transfers. In this sense, the subsidiarity of the State towards the family can be defined as "passive" in the Southern European countries, as opposed to the "active" subsidiarity found in continental ones (Kazepov 2008). The origins of the Italian welfare state were clearly occupational. Protection was gradually enlarged during the Trentes Glorieuses by successively including new categories of beneficiaries. This was possible in years of steady economic growth, when deficit spending was considered a legitimate way of financing social policies. The original occupational path was partly changed at the end of the Seventies, when a major universalistic reform in health policies introduced the National Health System, with access to public hospitals and public family doctors free of charge to all residents (Ferrera 1993). The bulk of social expenditure remains even nowadays destined to contributory-based schemes. Italy is the European country that spends most for old-age pensions and survivors: 60.7% of total social expenditure, against a EU-27 average of 45.9%, and 15.5% of GDP, more than typical Bismarckian countries such as France (13%) and Germany (12.4%). Conversely, expenditure is significantly lower for unemployment schemes (2% of social expenditure, against 6.1% of EU-27) and for measures for families and children (4.4%, against the 8% of EU-27). Resources for housing and social exclusion are also extremely low: 0.3% against a EU average of 3.5% (Eurostat 2008). Particularly critical is the lack of a national minimum income scheme, a feature that Italy shares only with two other EU countries: Greece and Hungary. Means-tested support schemes exist only for very specific categories: low income elderly over 65 (Pensione
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