The Well-Being of Italians: A Comparative Historical Approach

Andrea Brandolini () and Giovanni Vecchi

No 19, Quaderni di storia economica (Economic History Working Papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area

Abstract: The paper describes the evolution of the well-being of the Italians during the 150 years since the country’s unification. The progress in material standard of living was substantial, with GDP per capita growing 13 times between 1861 and 2010 and hours of work (and hence effort) falling considerably, but was roughly in line with that experienced by most other European countries. By relying on a novel database on household budgets, the paper shows that economic growth was accompanied by a long-run reduction of inequality that appears however to have been reversed in the last two decades. Progress was not limited to the economic domain: educational attainment improved considerably, although less than in other countries; on the other hand, the increase in life expectancy was spectacular and brought Italians to lead the international ranking.

Keywords: Italian history; human progress; income inequality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-his
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.bancaditalia.it/pubblicazioni/quaderni ... .htmlpage.language=1 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bdi:workqs:qse_19

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Quaderni di storia economica (Economic History Working Papers) from Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().