Around the world, people commonly associate Italy with their favorite foods: pasta, bread and warm, baked goods. They imagine music playing on the streets and visiting the beautiful and historic sites of Rome, Naples and Florence. In their mental scenes of Italy, everything is happy and life is good. However, just like every other country, hunger in Italy results in struggles to feed all of its citizens, and more than 1.5 million people each day go without enough to eat.

The United Nations defines food security as every person having physical, social and economic access to enough safe and nutritious food to meet and sustain dietary needs for a productive and healthy life. The term “hunger” is used to describe periods in which people experience severe food insecurity where they go days without eating. This is because of the lack of money, access or other resources. Here are four facts about hunger in Italy.

Four Facts About Hunger in Italy

1. For the past six years, hunger in Italy has maintained a steady rate of 2.5% of the population. This is a low percentage. However, Italy’s total population is 60.36 million. With this considered, 1.509 million are subject to food insecurity each day.
2. Additionally, the average Disposable Personal Income in Italy dropped by almost six thousand euros per year. This happened after seeing a consistent rise in salaries over the past three years. Disposable personal income is the wage workers keep after taxes are taken out. As a result, workers stretch their paychecks out much more than usual and limit food expenses. In a table listed with 35 economically developed countries, Italy ranked seventh in the leading percentages of relative child poverty with a rate of 15.9%. Relative poverty is calculated by dividing a family’s disposable income by the number of people living in the residence. If the result is less than 50% of the national median income, they live in relative poverty.
3. Furthermore, in March of 2019, the Italian government began a new welfare program for its underprivileged population. Italian citizens who qualify must be earning less than 9,360 euros per year. The national average is approximately 22,000 euros. Also, they cannot own any expensive luxury items such as boats or second homes. The welfare program has a pre-paid debit card to use for groceries, bills, medicines and other necessities. Able-bodied residents must enter a job-finding program or a training program.
4. Also, the United Nations has a set of seventeen goals it hopes to achieve by the end of 2030. One of these goals is Zero Hunger to work toward food security for every global citizen. After decades of consistent rises in food security, things took a turn for the worse in 2015, and food security levels began to decrease again. Today, 690 million people suffer from hunger; 135 million suffer from acute hunger. The COVID-19 pandemic put so many out of work and tore apart economies. It is actively putting an estimated 130 million more people at risk of dying of acute hunger this year. The world population is rising and natural resources are depleting. As a result, we need revolutions in global agricultural systems more than ever before.

– Rebecca Blanke
Photo: Pikist