A distance that grows more and more. It is well known that Italy is not a country for young people. What is less obvious is the awareness that the distance between new and old generations is increasingly wider. And that this distance could turn into a powder keg. To realize this, we decided to consult more indicators and also evaluate the differences between young people and adults, Italians and second generation Italians. Starting from poverty.
Because minors and young people in Italy are increasingly poorer
Let’s start with the data. In 2025, absolute poverty involves over 2.1 million families and 5.4 million people: 8% of families and 9.3% of residents in Italy respectively. These are households that are unable to sustain the expense necessary to purchase goods and services considered essential. But the national data hides profound differences, which emerge when we look at citizenship and age.
Among people of foreign citizenship, the incidence of absolute poverty reaches 29.8%: almost three in ten. However, if families are considered, the share is 29.4% among those made up exclusively of foreigners and 26.7% among those with at least one foreign member.
The second piece of evidence concerns generations: absolute poverty decreases as age increases. As the table shows, it involves 12.5% of children under 18, one million and 136 thousand children and adolescents, and 12.1% of young people between 18 and 34 years old. However, it drops to 8.9% among those aged 35-64 and to 6.1% among those aged at least 65. For minors and young people, therefore, the rate is approximately double compared to the elderly.
Comparison with the past shows how much this fragility has consolidated. From 2014 to 2025, absolute poverty went from 9.4 to 12.5% among minors and from 8.6 to 12.1% among young people. In the last year the two groups have followed different trends: the share has fallen among minors and risen among 18-34 year olds, without these fluctuations being able to be automatically interpreted as statistically significant changes.
The picture remains that of a country in which new generations face a higher-than-average risk of poverty, often even before entering the world of work. Which, as we will see, presents other difficulties.
The working poor and the wage gap with adults
Although the employment rate has increased in recent years, the benefits have certainly not been uniform. And the unemployment rate, although it has decreased, remains double among young people compared to adults. 11.9% of Italians under 35 are unemployed compared to 6.2% of the general average, while the so-called “neet”, i.e. young people who neither study nor work, stand at over 13%.
However, the real issue is perhaps wages. According to the most recent INPS data (relating to 2024), employees between 25 and 29 years old received on average 18,436 euros gross over the entire year, compared to 30,278 euros for 50-54 year olds: 39% less. Between 30 and 34 years of age the average salary rises to 22,178 euros, but remains almost 27% lower.
The comparison concerns employees in the non-agricultural private sector, excluding domestic workers, and is also affected by the different employment continuity: 25-29 year olds have an average of 232 paid days, compared to 270 for 50-54 year olds. Translated: they are much more exposed to work discontinuity with fixed-term and part-time contracts, often involuntary, which then has a decisive impact on their disposable income and life plans.
Even in this case we are not talking about a static picture, but about a mobile dynamic, which is clearly to the detriment of younger workers. A study by economists Nicola Bianchi and Matteo Paradisi, illustrated on lavoce.info in 2024 (based on the analysis of INPS data from 1985 to 2019) found that the salary gap between under 35s and over 55s has almost doubled. Over the same period, the probability of young people falling into the top quarter of the highest paid workers decreased by 34%, while that of those over 55 increased by 32%. An evidence that pushes many young people to leave and seek their fortune elsewhere, as we have said.
A social elevator that has been blocked for 20 years
Also affecting the condition of many young people is the awareness that, unlike in the past, it is increasingly difficult to improve one’s starting conditions. The main data is one: according to the latest Istat annual report 2026, among those employed born in 1980-1994, 27.1% found themselves in a lower working position than that of their family of origin at the age of thirty, while only 25.1% had reached a higher position. It’s the first time this has happened since the post-war period.
These are dynamics that we do not discover today. In a 2018 study by Bank of Italy, the starting conditions explain up to almost 90% of the variability in individual income, while family transfers (inherits and donations) explain between 30% and 50% of the overall wealth held by Italian families. Not only that: if in the 1990s, factors not chosen by the individual (family origin, place of birth, sex) explained around 20% of the variability in per capita income; in more recent years researchers placed this share at 24-25. The same study underlined how the study counted less and less in reversing the starting conditions.
An example that is also confirmed in the data on our graduates. Five years after the title, those who work abroad declare an average net monthly salary of 2,941 euros, compared to 1,840 euros for those who work in Italy: it is 59.9 percent more. The gap is already evident one year after graduation, when the average salary abroad is 2,290 euros net per month, 57.6% more than the 1,452 euros of those who remain in the Italian market. Data that explains the reasons for an exodus which, as already mentioned, pushes thousands of young people to seek a future elsewhere, outside national borders. And which condemns us, not too slowly, to decline.