Le conseguenze dell’inflazione su salari, redditi, disuguaglianze

Italian inflation has reached its monthly peak (+12.6%) in October and November 2022, has slowed down in the following months, but was still at 6.3% in July 2023. Since the autumn of 2021, energy goods have been the driver of the inflation surge. The lack of price control measures over energy prices has favoured the spread of price increases to the whole economy, with ‘core’ inflation reaching 7% in February 2023 and falling slightly in later months. Inflation has severely hit incomes and wages, with a widening gap between inflation and nominal wages; in the first nine months of 2022 real wages lost 6.6 percentage points and in the first half of 2023 there has been only a minor recovery of the purchasing power of salaries. Inflationary pressures have affected Italian households unevenly; price increases have had a much higher impact on the poorest groups of the population, due to their large share of expenditures on energy and food. Compensatory measures for supporting business and household have been relevant. From the end of 2021 to 2023, the Italian government spent about 90 billion euros, with transfers that reached 2.8% of GDP in 2022. These measures benefited households for 16.9 billion euros, firms for 23.5 billion, while 22.4 billion went to supporting the overall economy. Such transfers, however, failed to bring price dynamics under control; the polarisation of real incomes is deepening, with a growing share of the share of population under the poverty line.