The growth of the southern economy in the three-year period 2015-2017 has only partially recovered the economic and social heritage dispersed by the crisis in the South. Recovery driven by private investment, the contribution of public spending is missing. Strong lack of homogeneity between the regions of Southern Italy: in 2017, Calabria, Sardinia and Campania record the highest rate of development. More occupation but weak and precarious. The widening of social hardship, between families in absolute poverty and poor workers. New demographic dualism: less young, less South. The limitation of citizenship rights, the gap in public services.
2017 SOUTH GDP + 1,4% - In 2017 the South continued its slow recovery but in a context of great uncertainty it risks slowing down. GDP increased in the South by 1,4%, compared to 0,8% in 2016. This is thanks to the strong recovery of the manufacturing sector (5,8%), particularly in activities related to consumption, and, to a lesser extent , construction (1,7%). Growth was only marginally higher in the Center-North (+ 1,5%).
RETRIEVED BY PRIVATE INVESTMENTS - Private investments in the Mezzogiorno grew by 3,9%, consolidating the recovery of the previous year: the increase was slightly higher than that of the Center-North (+ 3,7%). The growth of investments in the South has affected all sectors. But compared to pre-crisis levels, gross fixed investments are cumulatively in the Mezzogiorno even lower than -31,6% (much higher than in the Center-North, -20%).
Worrying, instead, is the contraction of the current public expenditure in the 2008-2017 period, -7,1% in the South, while it has grown by 0,5% in the rest of the country.
STRONG INHOMOGENEITY OF THE RECOVERY IN THE REGIONS - The three-year recovery 2015-2017 confirms that the recession is now behind for all Italian regions, and yet the trends are somewhat differentiated. The degree of inhomogeneity, at the regional and sectoral level, is extremely high in the South. In the 2017, Calabria, Sardinia and Campania are the southern regions with the highest growth rate, respectively + 2%, + 1,9% and + 1,8%. However, these are still smaller variations in GDP compared to the regions of the Center-North, compared to + 2,6% of Valle d'Aosta, + 2,5% of Trentino Alto Adige, + 2,2% of Lombardy.
In Calabria, the region that last year marked the most significant acceleration of growth, in the 2015-2017 period it was above all the constructions that drove the recovery (+ 12% in the three years), thanks also to the public works carried out with the European funds, followed by agriculture (+ 7,9%) and industry in the strict sense (+ 6,9%). The performance of services (+ 2,9%) was much more modest in the last three years.
Sardinia, with some uncertainty from the recession compared to the rest of the southern regions, after the negative trend of the product in the 2016 (-0,6%), registered a significant + 2017% in the 1,9. In the three-year period 2015-2017 was above all the industry in the strict sense to mark a decidedly positive trend (+ 12,9%), while the constructions stand on + 3,1% and services on + 3%. On the other hand, agriculture is very bad, marking -4,2% in the three years.
In Campania, after the revision of the 2016 GDP trend (falling from + 2,4% to + 1,5%), 2017 was a year in which the gross product continued to grow by 1,8%, confirming in the three-year period of
resumed an important dynamism. In the region the constructions (+ 16,5% in the 2015-2017) went well, driven by the infrastructures financed with the European funds, but also the industry in the strict sense continues its run (+ 8,9% in the last three years), thanks above all, driven by the Development Contracts, most of which concerned Campania. The services show a more modest + 3,7% in the three-year period, thanks in particular to tourism. While agriculture goes against the grain and accuses a decrease between 2015 and 2017 equal to -1,3%.
Puglia, which in the 2016 had slowed down (+ 0,2%) compared to the positive trend of the 2015 (+ 1%), raises its head and the regional GDP in 2017 stands at + 1,6%. Merit, in particular, of the construction industry, also in this case driven by the expenditure of European funds for public works (+ 11,5%), but also by a positive input from industry in the strict sense (+ 9,4%). Agriculture in Puglia, despite the problems it has experienced and continues to have, has a positive performance (+ 4% in the three-year period) while services are essentially stationary, registering a modest + 0,7%.
Abruzzo raises its head, in 2017, with a GDP that grows by 1,2%: it had just registered + 0,3% in 2015 and + 0,2% in 2016. The recovery is mainly due to agriculture (+ 9% in the three-year period), and partly also to industry in the strict sense (+ 3,8%). Services show a more modest increase of + 2%, while buildings, in contrast to the rest of the South, are bad: their performance between 2015 and 2017 is negative, -14,5%.
Basilicata is witnessing a modest increase in GDP, + 0,7% in 2017, after the strong acceleration of growth in recent years: even + 8,9% in 2015, + 1,3% in 2016. It should be noted that the Lucanian industry is in strong recovery already from the 2014 and continues to drive the regional economy, albeit with different intensities, in the three-year period, at the end of which it records a very positive performance (+ 47% in 205-2017) . In the period, construction is also good (+ 18,3%) while both services (-1,3% in the three-year period) and agriculture (-1,2%) appear to be in contrast with the rest of the southern economy.
Sicily, on the other hand, recorded a slowdown in growth, + 0,4% in 2017, after recording an increase in 1% GDP in 2016 and 0,9% in 2015. On the Island, industry in the strict sense of the word shows an important performance in the three-year recovery period (+ 14,1%), even agriculture shows an overall positive trend (+ 2%) and so services (+ 1,6%). To curb the performance of the Sicilian economy, as well as in Abruzzo, is the construction sector that scores the -6,3% in the 2015-2017 period.
The only southern region in the 2017 that recorded a negative trend in GDP is Molise, -0,1%, which grew by 1,3% in 2015 and 1,1% in 2016. The Molise economy was supported in the 2015-2017 by construction (+ 26,4%), but industry in the strict sense shows a particularly negative performance (-7,4%). In the three-year period, services have registered + 2%, while agriculture is languishing (+ 0,4%).
2018 AND 2019 FORECASTS: BRAKING RISK WITHOUT ADEQUATE POLICIES - According to the forecasts elaborated by the SVIMEZ, in the 2018, the GDP of the Center-North would grow of 1,4%, to greater extent of that of the regions of the South + 1%. Total internal consumption weighs on the different territorial dynamics (+ 1,2% in the Center-North and + 0,5% in the South), in particular the consumption of the PA, which mark + 0,5% in the Center-North and -0,3% in the South. But it is especially in the 2019 that there is a risk of a sharp slowdown in the southern economy: the growth of the product will be + 1,2% in the Center-North and + 0,7% in the South. In two years, a substantial halving of the rate of development. The "trend" slowdown of the southern economy in the 2019 is estimated by the SVIMEZ, in a context of policy neutrality, pending the Update to the DEF and the Budget Law. In the absence of an appropriate policy, the level of public investment in the South should also be lower by about 4,5 billion next year compared to the most recent peak (in the 2010). If, instead, in 2019 it was possible to fully recover this gap, favoring to a greater extent the infrastructural investments that the South is in great need, this would give rise to an additional growth of almost one percentage point (+ 0,8%), compared to that expected (just a + 0,7%), so the growth differential between the Center-North and the South would be completely canceled, indeed, it would be the South to grow more, with benefit for the entire country.
NORTH SOUTH INTERDEPENDENCE - Center-North and Mezzogiorno increase or retreat together. The growth of the South, beyond the importance of local factors, which also have their own relevance, is strongly influenced by the performance of the national economy, and vice versa. The growth of the Center-North, beyond its greater integration in international markets, is equally dependent, for various reasons, on the trends in the South. This is demonstrated by the fact that in the period 2000-2016 the two macro-areas shared the same stagnant trend in GDP per capita: + 1,1% on an annual average. Suffice it to say that, according to SVIMEZ calculations, 20 of the approximately 50 billion of fiscal residual transferred to the southern regions from the public budget go back to the Center-North in the form of demand for goods and services.
THE MIDDAY THAT STILL SUFFERS. A "LIMITED" CITIZENSHIP: WORK, INEQUALITIES AND CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS -The pace of growth is completely insufficient to address the social emergencies in the area. Inequalities also widen in the recovery: employment increases, but there is a downward redefinition of its structure and quality: young people are cut off, low-skilled and low-paid jobs increase, therefore wage growth is “Slowed down” and unable to affect increasing levels of poverty, even in families where the reference person is employed. The gap in public services, the “limited” citizenship connected to the lack of guarantee of essential levels of services, affects the social stability of the area and represents the first constraint to the expansion of the productive fabric.
EMPLOYMENT IN RECOVERY, BUT WEAK AND PRECISE - The employment growth continued in the 2017, albeit with a slowdown at the end of the year: in the South it increased by 71 thousand units (+ 1,2%) and 194 thousand in the Center-North (+ 1,2%). But in the South it is still insufficient to fill the collapse of jobs in the crisis: in the average of the 2017 employment in the South is 310 thousand units less than 2008, while in the whole of the Central and Northern regions is higher than 242 thousand units . During the 2017, the increase in Southern employment is almost exclusively due to the growth in forward contracts (+ 61 thousand, equal to + 7,5%) while those with permanent contracts (+ 0,2%) are stationary. There has been a sharp slowdown of the latter with respect to the growth of 2,5% in the 2016, which shows that the positive effects of the tax relief for new hires in the South are disappearing.
In recent years the occupational structure has been radically redefined, to the detriment of young people, witnessed by the aging of the occupied workforce. The most striking fact is the dramatic generational dualism: the negative balance of 310 thousand occupied between the 2008 and the 2017 in the South is the synthesis of a reduction of over half a million young people between 15 and 34 years (-578 thousand), a contraction of 212 thousand occupied in the adult 35-54 years and a growth concentrated almost exclusively among the ultra 55enni (+ 470 thousand units).
THE ENLARGEMENT OF SOCIAL DISCERNMENT, BETWEEN FAMILIES IN ABSOLUTE POVERTY AND POOR WORKERS - In the South there is a clear break between economic dynamics which, albeit slowing down, resumed movement after the crisis, and a social dynamics which tends to exclude a growing share of citizens from the labor market, widening the pockets of poverty and discomfort to new segments of the population. The number of southern families with all members seeking employment doubled between 2010 and 2018, from 362 to 600 (in the Center-North they are 470). The number of unemployed households also grew in 2016 and 2017, on average by 2% a year, despite the growth in overall employment, confirming the consolidation of exclusion areas within the South, mainly concentrated in the large urban suburbs. These are pockets of growing marginalization and social degradation, which also suffer from the weakness of public services in peripheral areas.
The growth of the working poor phenomenon is worrying: the growth of low-paid jobs, due to the overall disqualification of occupations and the explosion of involuntary part-time work, is one of the causes, particularly in the South, for which the growth in employment in the recovery has been able to affect an increasingly alarming situation of social emergency.
NEW DEMOGRAPHIC DUALISM: MORE DEAD WHO BORN, LESS YOUNG, LESS SOUTH - In the 2017 the Italian population amounts to 60 million and 660 thousand units, in further decline of almost 106 thousand units. It is as if a medium-sized Italian city disappeared from one year to the next. The population decreases despite the increase of foreigners: in 2017 the decrease was of 203 thousand units compared to an increase of 97 thousand foreign residents. The demographic weight of the South decreases and is now equal to 34,2%, also due to a lower incidence of foreigners (in 2017 in the Center-North resided 4.272 thousand foreigners compared to 872 thousand foreigners in the South).
In the last 16 years have left the South 1 million and 883 thousand residents: half young people aged 15 and 34 years, almost a fifth graduate, the 16% of whom has moved abroad. Almost 800 thousand have not returned. Even in the 2016, when the economic recovery showed signs of consolidation, more than 131 thousand residents were canceled from the South. Among the southern regions, are Sicily, which loses 9,3 thousand residents (-1,8 per thousand), Campania (-9,1 thousand residents, for a net migration rate of -1,6 per thousand) and Puglia (-6,9 thousand residents, for a net migration rate of -1,7), those with the most negative migration balance.
CITIZENSHIP RIGHTS LIMITED TO THE SOUTH, THE DIVARY IN PUBLIC SERVICES - Even today, the citizen of the South, despite a tax burden equal to if not higher as a result of the local surcharges, lacks (or is lacking) fundamental rights: in terms of livability of the local environment, safety, adequate standards of education, suitability of health and care services for adults and children. In particular, in the social welfare sector, the delay in the southern regions concerns both services for children and those for the elderly and the non self-sufficient. More generally, the entire healthcare sector presents differentials in terms of performance that are below the national minimum standard as shown by the grid of the Essential Levels of Assistance in the regions subject to the repayment plan: Molise, Puglia, Sicily, Calabria and Campania , albeit with a recovery in recent years, they still default on some of the objectives set. The data on interregional hospital mobility testify to the shortcomings of the southern health system, especially in some specific fields of specialization, and the length of waiting times for hospitalizations. The regions that show the greatest flows of emigration are Calabria, Campania and Sicily, while Lombardy and Emilia Romagna especially attract sick people. The long waiting times for specialist and outpatient services are also the basis for the growth in expenditure incurred by families with the consequent impact on income. Closely connected is the phenomenon of "health poverty", according to which the onset of serious diseases is one of the most important causes of impoverishment of Italian families, especially in the South: in the southern regions they are 3,8% in Campania , 2,8% in Calabria, 2,7% in Sicily; at the opposite extreme we find Lombardy with 0,2% and 0,3% of Tuscany.
The differences are confirmed also with regard to the efficiency of public offices in terms of waiting times at the registry office, ASL and post offices. The SVIMEZ has built a summary index of the performance of public administrations in the regions on the basis of the quality of public services provided to citizens in everyday life: 100 fact the value of the most efficient region (Trentino-Alto Adige) shows that the southern ones, with the exception of Campania which stands at 61, Sardinia at 60 and Abruzzo at 53, are below half: Calabria 39, Sicily 40, Basilicata 42, Puglia 43.