Source: press office Centro Studi delle Camere di Commercio Guglielmo Tagliacarne
Rome, 22 July 2022 – The price hike has lightened the wallets of Italians, who have lost €1,756 per head in three years (-9.1%). Between June 2019 and June 2022, per capita income fell in
absolute terms, especially in the North-East -2,104 euro. But in relative terms, inflation hit hard mainly in the South -10%. While at a regional level the high cost of living has bitten hardest
in Trentino-Alto Adige, with a loss in purchasing power of 2,962 euro (-12.3%).
These are the findings of an analysis by the Tagliacarne Study Centre on the impact of the ISTAT consumer price index on Italians’ income over the last three years.
The regions of Southern Italy risk being discriminated against not only because of price increases, but also because of their lower income levels and the composition of their consumption
‘basket’. This is underlined by Gaetano Fausto Esposito, Director General of the Tagliacarne Study Centre, who adds: if, for example, we relate the reduction in purchasing
power to the total amount of goods and services produced, we see that the loss in Southern Italy is in relative terms about one third greater than that suffered by the Centre-North, with very
high peaks in Sicily, Apulia and Calabria. Moreover, the greater food consumption component of southern households, in the face of particularly high price rises in recent months, exposes them to
further penalisation.
More in detail, after Trentino-Alto Adige, the losses in the pockets of Italians record values above 2 thousand euro in Emilia-Romagna (-2,136 euro), Friuli-Venezia Giulia (-2,049) and Lombardy
(-2,021). On the other hand, the lowest values of less than 1,400 euro are found in Calabria (-1,334), Campania (-1,303), Basilicata (-1,295) and Molise (-1,287).
However, it is particularly in the Mezzogiorno that the rate of inflation on per capita disposable income has a more generalised impact. As many as 6 of the 10 regions that record percentage
drops greater than the national average are, in fact, in the South, where inflationary pressures on house, energy and food prices are the main factors.
