Service Bank of Italy
After the collapse in the first months of the pandemic, there is a cautious improvement in the scenario. But several unknowns remain
by Raffaele Lungarella
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The onset of pandemic and its spread have affected the concern of families for their income, the possibility of meeting the financial commitments undertaken and the fear of not being able to maintain the standard of living they had before the virus put all at risk. The danger is, of course, felt more strongly by the families who were already in greater difficulty.
The Bank of Italy survey
Two years after the start of the pandemic, obviously, the apprehension for their present and for the future of their economic capacity. After the strong initial shock, it cannot be said that we have returned to the starting point, but it seems that during these almost 2 years of circulation of the virus, families have attenuated the perception about the uncertainty about their income tomorrow.
This, in short , the interpretation that can be made of the results of the 6 extraordinary surveys on households, carried out by the Bank of Italy , to monitor the economic reaction of families to the spread of the virus. These sample surveys, with each of which at least 2 thousand people were always interviewed, were published between June 2020 and November 2021 and cover the period between the end of April and the beginning of May 2020 and the end of August and the beginning of September 2021.
The impact of lockdown
In the first 2 months of confinement at home, the closure of a part of the factories and other economic activities, half of the families interviewed blamed a reduction in income. The blow was particularly hard for families whose income derived from precarious dependent work or from the daily income of self-employed activities: the income of employees and workers was reduced at least by half in 1 case out of 2 and that of traders, artisans and professionals 2 times out of 3.
Although the Inps continued to pay re them the same pre-pandemic amounts, even for 20% of retirees the income was halved. Probably it must have been people who supplemented a relatively low annuity with income deriving from the rent of a property or with the income obtained by continuing to do some work.
THE GREAT TRENDS FROM HOUSING TO CULTURE
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Progressive reopening
The gradual reopening of factories, laboratories, professional activities and the measures put in place by the Government to support people and economic activities, already starting from the end of August last year seem to have acted as a barrier to the negative effects on the income of the persistence of the virus: the second survey carried out by the central bank found that 68% of the total number of households had an unchanged income, with an increase of 20 percentage points compared to the March-April survey. In subsequent monitoring, the fluctuations around this level were a few percent.
The prospects of however, improvements in household income have always been relatively modest. Even if, with the evolution of the pandemic situation, a narrowing of the area of pessimism must be recorded: within 1 year, families that foresee a reduction in their income compared to the level reached before the health emergency four to one in seven.
Savings penalized
This does not seem to have greatly improved the chances of saving: the share of households that in each survey expects to be able to set aside a few euros in the next 12 months has fluctuated between 42 and 44 percent; the majority of them therefore saw a prospect of zero savings or even the need to borrow to cover their expenses.
In the last survey, only 3 out of 10 families said they had saved something; they are likely to be those with the highest incomes, which would also justify the increase in deposits in current accounts recorded during the pandemic.
It is not necessary anyway forget that the virus fell on a condition that for many families was already more than precarious: half of them with disposable income struggled to make it to the end of the month.
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