In Davos, investors, economists and political decision-makers are wondering about the near future of the global economy and the new geopolitical balances. In an increasingly fragmented world, the questions that cyclically return to the center of the debate are always the same: how to cooperate in a context of growing tensions, where to find new sources of growth, how to truly invest in human capital.
These are questions that do not remain confined to the rooms of the World Economic Forum. On the contrary, they find a concrete – often problematic – response in individual countries. Italy is one of these cases. The picture drawn by Oxfam Italia’s latest report on poverty and inequality clearly shows how wide the distance between global ambitions and national reality remains.
Poverty in Italy: stable numbers, increasing fragility
In 2024, almost one in five Italians lived at risk of income poverty: around 11 million people with resources lower than 60% of the national median. Alongside this area of vulnerability, over 2.2 million families – equal to 5.7 million individuals – were in conditions of absolute poverty, without sufficient income to cover a minimum basket of essential goods and services.
The overall figure remains substantially stable compared to 2023, but behind this apparent stability there are hidden signs of worsening. In fact, the incidence of absolute poverty among families with an employed reference person is growing (15.6%), confirming that work alone is no longer enough to avoid the poverty trap. Inflation, high rents and stagnant wages continue to erode purchasing power.
The conditions of minors also remain critical: absolute poverty among children and young people reaches 13.8%, the highest level since 2014. And the situation worsens further for rented families, especially those with at least one foreigner (37.2%) and for families with children (32.3%).
Wealth is growing, but it is increasingly concentrated
Over the last fifteen years, net national wealth has increased by over 2,000 billion euros in nominal terms. But the increase was not shared at all. Around 91% of the new wealth ended up in the hands of the richest 5% of families, while just over 2% went to the poorest half. Between 2010 and 2025 the gap widened further. The share of wealth held by the richest 10% rose from 52.1% to 59.9%, while that of the poorest 50% fell from 8.5% to 7.4%.
In 2025 alone, 79 individuals increased their assets by over 54 billion euros, reaching a total of 307.5 billion. Today the top 5% control almost half of the national wealth, much more than the bottom 90% of the population owns.
Inequalities and democracy: a structural link
This gap between widespread poverty and concentrated wealth is not just a social or economic issue. It directly affects the quality of democracy. According to the study Income Inequality and the Erosion of Democracy in the Twenty-First Century by Eli G. Rau and Susan Stokes, rising inequality is one of the main drivers of democratic erosion in the 21st century.
The research analyzes over 90 democracies between 1995 and 2020 and identifies cases of democratic backsliding: not sudden ruptures, but a gradual weakening of the institutions, from the compression of press freedom to the reduction of the independence of the judiciary and Parliament.
The central point is not so much the average income of a country, but the concentration of wealth. Where growing shares of income and assets accumulate in the hands of the top 1% and top 10%, the likelihood that leaders will emerge capable of exploiting resentment and polarization, hollowing out democratic rules from within, increases.
Post-Covid policies: emergency interventions, no structural turning point
In the period following the pandemic, governments’ responses mainly moved along an emergency line. In Italy, after the phase marked by Citizenship Income and the extraordinary supports introduced during the health crisis, policies to combat poverty have been reoriented towards more selective and conditional tools, such as the Inclusion Allowance and Support for Training and Work.
A paradigm shift which, according to Oxfam, has significantly narrowed the range of beneficiaries, leaving large segments of the vulnerable population uncovered: low-income workers, families with intermittent employment, families without formally recognized fragility.
Tax bonuses, temporary discounts and measures lump sum they contributed to attenuating the immediate impact of inflation, but without affecting the structural causes of the loss of purchasing power. The result is a fragmented social protection network, which intervenes ex post and in an uneven manner, without managing to build a stable barrier against the expansion of vulnerability.
This is where the crux comes back to Davos. Without a structural rethinking of redistributive, work and welfare policies, the promises of inclusive growth risk remaining disconnected from the reality of the countries. And that distance between institutions and citizens, already deep, continues to fuel mistrust, polarization and democratic fragility.
