In recent years, the data published by INPS have multiplied, within a positive general strategy of greater transparency of public administration, in which Istat, Ministries, Bank of Italy and other bodies they make reliable and official data and information available to the public, which allow us to better understand where the country is going and where our welfare system is going. Thus, the publication of the Social Report on pensions paid in 2025, created by the INPS Steering and Supervision Committee (CIV), is particularly valuable. Also interesting is the fact that it is a body – within the INPS – representing businesses and trade unions, with the aim of building internal monitoring systems in which social forces are also involved, so as not to hide any problems under the carpet.
The CIV-INPS 2025 data point to some significant changes in workers’ paths in our country, which also have a lot to do with family dynamics. Overall, at least three structural data deserve attention: firstly, a marked extension of working life emerges (both women and men retire at least one year later, compared to 2024); thus – second element – the pension advance opportunities (the various women’s quotas, 103, etc.) were used in a much more marginal way; lastly, women’s pensions are decidedly lower than those of men (-34%)also worsening compared to 2024 (where there was “only” talk of -24% to the detriment of women).
These data confirm the complex transition that our social security system is going through, whose economic sustainability is put to the test by the constant lengthening of life for the elderly – which means pensions received for many years – and by the presence, in recent years, of the baby boom generations arriving at retirement age, decidedly more numerous than those of those who are at work today. The contributory system introduced in the 1990s corrects and rebalances the system, but with decidedly lower pensions – and this is also why workers stay at work longer.
Two “family” elements deserve particular attention from these data: firstly, work activity in old age makes the “grandparents” resource much less available as help in caring for grandchildren (fewer grandparents babysitters), for many years an irreplaceable piece of welfare and family-work conciliation for many young couples with children. If grandparents retire later, many more nursery places will be needed and a greater and more effective number of family-work conciliation measures will be needed for their parents (including corporate welfare). Secondly, the continuing economic disadvantage of women compared to men, even in the pension sector, reveals an increasingly intolerable inequality in male and female work trajectories, where women have more discontinuous, less paid work paths (often despite perfect equality of functions and skills), often with greater part-time work, which, in a contributory-only system, becomes a double disadvantage: in addition to being paid less when you work – or rather, “precisely because you are paid less” -, your pension will also be lower. To this gender disadvantage, which affects women in general, we must add – and not forget! – what could be called the “maternity divide”, i.e. the specific disadvantage of the woman who gives birth to one or more children, who very often sees an immediate impoverishment of her income (absence from work, periods of leave, possible recourse to part-time work, even when for short periods), which then becomes an impoverishment deferred over time, given that if you work less you pay fewer contributions, and therefore as an elderly person, when you retire, your pension will inevitably be lower.
In times of demographic emergency, in times of birth rate policies, it would finally be time to rethink the economic and social security support interventions, favoring women who choose to have a child not only for their working present, but also for their retirement future – perhaps with additional notional contributions for each child, or with other future income protection systems. And not only to encourage the birth rate, but to guarantee greater equality for women, and above all for women who choose motherhood. Otherwise, anyone who chooses to give birth to a child “pays twice”!
*Francesco Belletti, director of the CISF
