A retirement account opened as soon as you are born, with the first money put in by the State and over sixty years to make it grow. It is one of the hypotheses on which the government is working in view of the next budget. The Minister of Labor Marina Calderone confirmed the project of a “social security fund at birth”, designed above all to give today’s young people a second pension to one day complement that of the INPS.
The idea starts from a now structural problem: with more discontinuous careers, low salaries and the contributory system, those who are young today risk arriving at retirement with much more modest allowances than previous generations. The answer would be to take advantage of the one thing a newborn has in abundance: time.
“A useful and timely proposal, on which we are working,” Calderone told Corriere della Sera on 23 August. The project involves the opening of a position for each new born, initially financed with a small public contribution and subsequently funded voluntarily by the family and, once an adult, by the beneficiary himself.
How much can 10 euros set aside for a child become?
The decisive point is compound interest. A little money invested over many decades can become much larger sums. Let’s do a purely indicative simulation. If a family paid 10 euros a month from birth until the age of 18 and then added nothing more, simply leaving the capital invested until the age of 67, the result would be approximately:
- 12 thousand euros with an average annual return of 3%;
- 38 thousand euros with a yield of 5%;
- 116 thousand euros with a yield of 7%.
With 20 euros a month you would reach approximately 24 thousand, 75 thousand and 232 thousand euros respectively. With 50 euros per month, the theoretical capital would rise to approximately over half a million euros, obviously before taxes. A nice nest egg, at first glance: inflation must be taken into account which in sixty years can partially empty purchasing power. In real terms, assuming we maintain average inflation at 2% for 67 years, when in the simulation we read of 115,878 nominal euros we are talking about a capital equivalent to approximately 31 thousand euros today.
The German model: 10 euros per month from the state
Calderone explicitly mentions Germany, which has just taken a step in the same direction. The German government approved the bill on 12 August Frühstartrentethe “early pension” for children.
Berlin expects the state to pay 10 euros a month for each child aged 6 to 18 into an individual account – mind you – invested in the financial markets. In total there are 1,440 euros of public contributions. The German Ministry of Finance calculates that, assuming an average return of 7% per year, that money could be worth around 2,200 euros at 18 years old and 53 thousand euros at 65 years old, even without paying anything more. If the parents added another 10 euros per month until they reach adulthood, the capital could reach around 107 thousand euros.
The German recipe for saving your social security check
Again, this is a projection and not a promise: the German government specifies that 7% is a hypothetical historical average return on globally diversified equity investments, net of costs, and that the values do not take inflation into account.
| The different scenarios | Payments | Capital at 18 years | Final capital |
| €10/month from 0 to 18 years | €2,160 | €4,209 | €115,878 at 67 years old |
| €10/month from 6 to 18 years | €1,440 | €2,215 | €53,253 at 65 years old |
| €20/month from 6 to 18 years | €2,880 | €4,429 | €106,505 at 65 years old |
There is also an important difference: Germany has not entrusted investment management directly to the state. Parents will be able to choose a certified pension product from a private operator. If they do not do so, the capital will still be invested collectively under the management of the Bundesbank.
In Italy the money could be managed by INPS
The model that Calderone imagines for Italy would be more public. Supervision would be the responsibility of Covip, while INPS could take care of management, monitoring and reporting. The Ministry of Labor and Economy would instead have a guidance and supervisory role. This does not exclude private individuals. The minister herself opens up the possibility of working “in a synergistic way with market realities”.
And it is probably here that one of the most important matches will be played. The INPS today mainly manages a pay-as-you-go pension: workers’ contributions are used to finance pensions. The new fund would instead be capitalized: the money set aside would have to be invested to produce a return.
A possible architecture could therefore envisage an individual position under public governance, with the actual financial management entrusted by tender to specialized operators. This is essentially what already happens for many pension funds.
The government is pushing more and more towards supplementary pensions
The proposal is part of a transformation of Italian social security that has already begun. From 1 July 2026, the new rules on supplementary pensions for private employees came into force. Anyone hired for the first time has 60 days to choose whether to join a pension fund or keep the severance pay with the employer. If you do nothing, you will automatically join the fund provided for by the collective agreement.
The birth fund would therefore be the next step: not waiting for the first job to start building a supplementary pension, but starting decades earlier.