“Today we abolish poverty.” It was the evening of September 27, 2018 and the then deputy prime minister Luigi Di Maiostill a grillino, brought the happy news to the crowd gathered under the balcony of Palazzo Chigi: Lega e 5 Star Movement they had reached an agreement to include the Citizenship income.
Eight years have passed since that surreal moment; three since the centre-right inclusion allowance replaced the five-star one, which fluctuated between 500 and 780 euros per month – up to 900 for a family unit. And the balance of the M5s flag presents more lights than shadows. A few days ago, MF Milano Finanza proposed an eloquent summary. Duration of the measure: five years. Support recipients: 3.3 million people. Total cost: 34 billion euros. Amount of contributions received fraudulently and unduly requested: more than 665 million. A sum which, integrating the results of the checks Inps and those of the Financial policereaches almost one billion euros. In practice, the financial allocation of the latest Labor decree of the Meloni government. Therefore a question arises: rather than “paying those who are on the sofa” (we quote Matteo Renzi, 8 May 2018), could resources be invested to boost employment?
The legacy of the Citizen’s Income among frauds and false residents
Fraud has always been a raw nerve of the Grillina measure. Between January 2019 and January 2024, the Gdf was involved in 75,910 checks and found irregularities in almost 80% of cases: 60,111 episodes, with 62,215 subjects reported to the authorities. A non-negligible share of the anomalies involved foreigners, who represented 8-10% of the total beneficiaries of the bonus, but – these are estimates and not official statistics – between 20 and 35% of non-compliant situations. With a flood of false declarations, compiled by immigrants who did not comply with the requirement of ten-year residence in Italy. Some of the most striking episodes: 9 thousand Romanians who had never been to our country had drained 60 million from state coffers (November 2021); 300 foreigners illicitly received the check in Cagliari (October 2022); 131 non-EU citizens, in Piedmont, had managed to collect 1.7 million not owed (November 2023); in Naples, a grocery store acted as a sorting center to launder 2.3 million in monthly aid, which it credited to the Postepay of unemployed immigrants, withholding a percentage for the “service” (February 2024).
The real effects on poverty and the Campania bet
But, beyond the flaws, which the five-star income seems to easily open up to, what have been its concrete effects? Did it work? Has it really abolished poverty? Jesus Christ would have said: you will always have the poor with you. And indeed they remained. Also because – Il Sole 24 Ore wrote in 2021 – 56% of those who lived in poverty did not apply for the allowance, did not even contact the Caf, or, being foreign – and honest! – he did not meet the legal requirements for aid and resigned himself to being excluded from it. However, some objectives, the bonus achieved. Even in the period in which Giorgia Meloni had already arrived at Palazzo Chigi: between 2022 and 2023, the risk of poverty or social exclusion fell from 24.4 to 22.8%. The Citizen’s Income has mainly addressed situations of extreme poverty, primarily in the South.
And so, the new governor of Campania, Roberto Fico – unlike Di Maio, he remained in the 5-star party – he now intends to propose a regional version of the subsidy. Who knows how he will finance it, given that the Campania beneficiaries of the income were around 400 thousand; that some of them, today, receive the inclusion allowance; but that, even if the number of the potential audience was halved, to provide 500 euros per month the Region would have to allocate 1.2 billion per year. In the territory that recorded among the highest rates of irregularities in relation to the checks carried out. More than an accountant, Fico will need a miracle of San Gennaro.
The flop of active policies and the turning point of the inclusion allowance
Fraud aside, one of the weak elements of Citizenship Income was the system designed to support recipients in finding employment. In due course, the famous navigators were recruited. The three “suitable” offers had to come from them, if they were rejected the right to financial support would be lost. The successes? Few: in 2020, less than 26% of people able to work had started work and many of those who had made it had signed very short contracts; a year later, the numbers had improved (around 30% of employees) but not the stability of jobs. THE’Anpal had to report that 73% of those on the allowance had failed to get a job within three years.
And in all of this, it is difficult to understand how many have received public money by working illegally. The opacity, inefficiencies and costs of the intervention have led the centre-right executive to replace it, in 2023, with another mechanism: theinclusion allowance. The Minister of Social Policies, Marina Calderonehad defined it as «a fairer system, which distinguishes between those who can work and those who need protection». The difference compared to the previous provision was first and foremost cultural: where the Grillina philosophy of degrowth reasoned from the perspective of permanent unemployment, buffered by state subsidies, the purpose of the current majority was to support families in difficulty, with minors, disabled, elderly and fragile dependents, taking action to ensure that the so-called employable people entered the job market. Result: the average amount from 638 per month ended up with one million fewer people and costs the treasury 5-6 billion per year, while the citizen’s income fluctuated between 7 and 9 billion per year.
The job market between growth and technological unknowns
Has poverty exploded? No. The families in absolute poverty in 2022, with the Grillino income still in force, were 8.3%; in 2024, 8.4%. “Only” 0.1% more, despite the aftermath of the war in Ukraine. The risk of poverty and social exclusion, in the same period of time, fell from 24.4 to 23.1%. The employment rate, however, rose: from 58.2% in 2021 to 62.7% in 2025, an increase of 1.5 million units, which in theory reabsorbs the pool of former recipients of citizen’s income.
Especially since the bulk of the growth was concentrated on permanent contracts. With limits, obviously: female employment is below the EU average; many of the new employees are over 50; in the South, the employment rate is lower than the national figure (just over 48%). In short, there is still a lot to do. And it doesn’t mean that it can be done by decree. Many exogenous factors weigh on the economy: budget constraints that compromise investments, the international economic situation that generates inflation, uncertainty in energy supplies.
And then there is the great unknown, the subject of the first encyclical of Pope LeoArtificial intelligence. Here we enter the field of speculation, but the scenarios are disturbing: in 2023, Goldman Sachs spoke of a hemorrhage of 300 million jobs globally; a year later, the IMF feared that 60% of workers in advanced economies would suffer some impact from AI; the only optimist is the World Economic Forum, according to which, by 2030, 92 million jobs will disappear but 170 million new ones will arise. The imagination of the owners of Big Tech has been unleashed on the future. Elon Muskon It is the techno-subsidy of the posthuman utopia, in which automation will generate so much wealth that it will free man from the need to work. Paid to stay on the sofa: is this really our destiny?
