Institutional
2025 Nov 04 - 12:14
A “Welfare Italia” Forum was held today at the Corsie Sistine di Santo Spirito in Sassia in Rome entitled “Human Capital: a new mechanism for national competitiveness”. Opened with a message by the President of the Republic Sergio Mattarella, the 2025 “Welfare Italia” Think Tank Report was presented at the event; it was supported by Unipol in association with the TEHA Group and the support of a scientific committee comprising Veronica De Romanis, Giuseppe Curigliano, Giuseppe Guzzetti and Stefano Scarpetta.
- Welfare absorbs €669.2bn in Italy, amounting to 60.4% of total public spending, with pensions taking up16% of GDP; all components grew strongly over the 2019-2025 period: social policies (+35.2%), pensions (+25.3%), healthcare (24.8%) and education (+21.1%).
- Increasing demographic pressure: there was a historic minimum in birth rates in 2024 (370 thousand) and the natural balance was at -281 thousand; the median Istat (national statistics institute) scenario predicts a population drop to 54.8 million in 2050, with 34.9% over 65 years old.
- Continuing inequality: 23.1% Italians are at risk of poverty or social exclusion, with strong territorial dissimilarities.
- Human Capital as a strategic priority; there has to be investment in education (the school dropout rate is 9.8%, and the percentage of graduates in the 25-34 age group amounts to 31.6% compared to a European average of 44.1%), life-long learning, a competitive labour market, attraction/retention of skills (in 2024, over 49 thousand graduates left Italy) and prevention (only 5.6% of public healthcare spending is currently spent on prevention).
Read the complete Press Release.