THE SURVEY. Sociologist Marini’s Cmr research unit analyses the so-called polarisation of economic conditions in the North-East, where, incidentally, GDP remains high.
Veneto: the middle class is slipping down the social ladder
Over the past five years, the proportion of people who said they belonged to the upper-middle class has halved. “We live in a stagnant country with no social mobility.”
Piero Erle – Moving forward slowly? No, almost going backwards. The North-East, once hailed as the driving force of Italy, looks in the mirror and finds itself at a standstill or, in many cases, in reverse gear. And this is despite the fact that objective data on per capita GDP still place this part of Italy in the upper-middle tier of the national rankings, with the people of Trentino and Bolzano actually in first place. This is the curious picture that emerges from the new survey by Community Media Research – a think tank headed by sociologist Daniele Marini as scientific director – carried out in collaboration with Intesa Sanpaolo – Cassa Risparmio del Veneto. ‘The phenomenon of polarisation of conditions,’ says Marini, ‘is one of the legacies of the financial and economic crisis that began in 2008. The most evident impact has been on the production system: businesses have become increasingly divided’ between those that have nevertheless achieved positive results – mainly because they have invested in innovation and foreign markets – and those facing growing difficulties because they have remained stagnant and insular. Passive waiting, Marini points out, “has produced only negative outcomes and caused them to slip out of the market”.
