Intesa San Paolo presented this morning at its headquarters in Piazza Belgioso in Milan the “Monitor for the Geography of Fragility and Inequalities”born thanks to the collaboration with AICCON Research Center, SRM and the research Department of the bank itself. The idea behind this study is to demonstrate how fragility does not depend solely on income, but is influenced by a series of factors: economic, demographic, occupational and social. To provide a complete general overview, the Monitor cross-references 150 indicators province by province, rather than limiting itself to the usual regional or national averages.
The meaning of the operation is explained Paolo Bonassi, Chief Social Impact Officer Intesa Sanpaolo, «The Monitor confirms how inequalities are complex and non-linear phenomena, capable of manifesting themselves differently from territory to territory. From this perspective, Intesa Sanpaolo, with its ability to combine the economic and social dimensions, wants to play an enabling role in building responses aimed at the real needs of communities and people. The Monitor’s analyzes will be useful in guiding the Bank’s action. With an evolutionary and open vocation, Intesa Sanpaolo makes it available to institutions, businesses and social actors in the Third Sector to help create social value and encourage an increasingly significant impact.”
During the presentation of the Monitor, a question arose among those in the room: “Why does a bank do this?”. The answer is provided by AICCON itself: the gap in public resources for social issues in Europe is 190 billion per year, private capital is needed — and the bank has territorial proximity, investment capacity and relationships that no other entity has in the same way.
But it is the photograph of the data that the Monitor returns that should invite us to reflect and should alarm us: like the one on absolute poverty, which went from 6.2% to 8.4% in 10 years, with a sharp increase in the north. Better on the side of the NEET (young people who neither study nor work), down to 13%after ten years ago the percentage was double. There was an improvement but despite the result, Italy still occupies the last positions in the European rankings. We also follow with regards to female employment, at 61% in our country compared to 73% of the European average.
The Monitor works by cross-referencing a myriad of data. For example, those provinces have been identified that have a good job offer but a lower life expectancy than the Italian average. By verifying the causes, it emerges that the problem does not lie in assistance, but in prevention: in these areas, in fact, more avoidable deaths are recorded, due to the absence of adequate screening. The reason is linked to the low population density, which makes the healthcare system much more difficult to be widespread. The conclusion is simple, but not at all obvious: there is no single recipe for all territories, and the same resources can produce very different results depending on how they are organised.
It’s a change of vision that Paolo Venturi, of AICCON, summed it up by quoting the economist Joseph Stiglitz: «If we use the wrong indicators we will strive to achieve equally wrong results». The Monitor, in this sense, is not intended to be a static photograph of Italian poverty, but a tool that the bank intends to update over time, also making it available to local authorities and the third sector to guide choices and investments where they are really needed.
