Clicca qui per scaricare

Condividi
Why has the italian middle class remained so constant?
Titolo Rivista: SOCIOLOGIA E POLITICHE SOCIALI 
Autori/Curatori: Steve Pressmann 
Anno di pubblicazione:  2017 Fascicolo: 2  Lingua: Inglese 
Numero pagine:  21 P. 45-65 Dimensione file:  327 KB
DOI:  10.3280/SP2017-002004
Il DOI è il codice a barre della proprietà intellettuale: per saperne di più:  clicca qui   qui 


This paper contributes to the literature on the shrinking middle class by looking at Italy as a case study of how institutional, demographic and financial factors affect the size of the middle class. We look at eight other countries, nine countries in total, divided into three broad categories, based on the framework of Gøsta Esping-Andersen (1990: Anglo-Saxon nations, Nordic countries and Continental Europe. The Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) is the data source for the empirical work. The paper estimates the size of the middle class over time, noting the uniqueness of Italy, a country with a stable middle class over time, despite high and fluctuating unemployment rates. The paper examines some of the reasons the Italian middle class did not decline as it did in many developed countries.


Keywords: Middle Class Size; Income Inequality; LIS Database; Household Income; Poverty Threshold.

  1. Albers, M. 2007. Geographies of Housing Finance: The Mortgage Market in Milan, Italy. Growth and Change 38(2), pp. 174-199.
  2. Admanti, A. and Hellwig, M. 2014. The Banker’s New Clothes: What’s Wrong with Banking and What to Do about It. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press.
  3. Asgeir, J. 2008. Why Iceland: How One of the Smallest Countries Became the Meltdown’s Biggest Casualty. New York: McGraw Hill.
  4. Assa, J. 2016. The Financialization of GDP. London and New York: Routledge.
  5. Atkinson, A. 2015. Inequality: What Can Be Done? Cambridge. MA: Harvard University Press.
  6. Bernardi, F. and Poggio, T. 2004. Home-Ownership and Social Inequality in Italy, in K. Kurts and H.P. Blossfeld eds. Home Ownership and Social Inequality in Comparative Perspective. Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, pp. 184-232.
  7. Bianchi, R. 2014. National Report for Italy. available at
  8. Bound, J. and Johnson, G. 1992. Changes in the Structure of Wages in the 1980s: An Evaluation of Alternative Explanations. American Economic Review 82(3), pp. 371-392.
  9. Boyer, R. 2013. The Present Crisis: A Trump for a Renewed Political Economy. Review of Political Economy 25(1), pp. 1-38
  10. Brandolini, A. and Vecchi, G. 2013. Standards of Living, in G. Toniolo ed. Oxford Handbook of the Italian Economy since Unification. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 227-248.
  11. Brunnermeier, M. Harold James, H. and Landau, J.P. 2016. The Euro and the Battle of Ideas. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  12. Bulbarelli, M. 2016. The Housing Finance System in Italy and Spain: Why Did a Housing Bubble Develop in Spain and not in Italy? Freie Universität Berlin: Papers on International Political Economy, 26.
  13. Cobham, D., Cosci, S. and Mattesini, F. 1999. The Italian Financial System: Neither Bank Based Nor Market Based. The Manchester School, 67(3), pp. 325-345.
  14. D’Agostino, B. 2012. The Middle Class Fights Back. Santa Barbara, CA: Praeger.
  15. De Bonis, R., Pozzolo, A. and Stacchini, M. 2012. The Italian Banking System: Facts and Interpretations. Economics and Statistics Discussion Paper, No. 068/12.
  16. Deeg, R. 2005. Change from Within: German and Italian Finance in the 1990s. in W. Streek, W. and Thelen, K. eds. Beyond Continuity: Institutional Change in Advanced Political Economies. New York: Oxford University Press, pp. 169-202.
  17. Di Quirico, R. 2010. Italy and the Global Economic Crisis. Bulletin of Italian Politics 2(2), pp. 3-19.
  18. Esping-Andersen, G. 1990. The Three Worlds of Welfare Capitalism. Princeton: Princeton University Press.
  19. Estache, A. and Leipziger, D. Eds. 2009. Stuck in the Middle: Is Fiscal Policy Failing the Middle Class? Washington, DC: Brookings Institution.
  20. Faux, J. 2012. The Servant Economy: Where America’s Elite are Sending the Middle Class. Hoboken, NJ: John Wiley.
  21. Fisher, I. 1933. The Debt-Deflation Theory of Great Depressions. Econometrica 1(4), pp. 333-357.
  22. Frank, R. 2013. Falling Behind: How Rising Inequality Hurts the Middle Class. Oakland, CA: University of California Press.
  23. Friedman, T. 2005. The World is Flat. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
  24. Gilbert, D. 2002. The American Class Structure. Belmont, CA: Wadsworth.
  25. Gobbi, G. 2005. Housing Finance in Italy. Rome: Banca d’Italia.
  26. Goldstein, A. 2003. Privatization in Italy 1993-2002: Goals, Institutions, Outcomes, and Outstanding Issues. CESifo Working Paper No. 912.
  27. Graves, F. 2013. Left-Right? Forward-Back? Examining Longer Term Shifts in Values, Social Class, and Societal Outlook. (unpublished paper).
  28. Griliches, Z. 1986. Economic Data Issues. in Z. Griliches and M. Intriligator eds. Handbook of Econometrics. Vol 3 Amsterdam: Elsevier, pp. 1465-1514.
  29. Haig, R. 1921. The Concept of Income: Economic and Legal Aspects. The Federal Income Tax. New York: Columbia University Press, pp. 1-28.
  30. Hess, A. and Holzhausen, A. 2008. The Structure of European Mortgage Markets. Working Paper No. 97, Allianz Dresdner Economic Research.
  31. Horrigan, M. and Haugen, S. 1988. The Declining Middle-Class Thesis: A Sensitivity Analysis. Monthly Labor Review 111(5), pp. 3-13.
  32. Jordá, O., Schularick, M. and Taylor, A. 2014. The Great Mortgaging: Housing Finance, Crisis, and Business Cycles, Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. Working Paper No. 2014-23.
  33. Leicht, K. and Fitzgerald, S. 2013. Middle Class Meltdown in America: Causes, Consequences, and Remedies. London and New York: Routledge.
  34. Murray, C. 2012. Coming Apart: The State of White America, 1960-2010. New York: Crown Forum Publishing.
  35. OECD 2017. Youth Unemployment. https://data.oecd.org/unemp/youth-unemployment-rate.htm. Accessed 25 March.
  36. Orshansky, M. 1965. Counting the Poor: Another Look at the Poverty Profile. Social Security Bulletin 28(1), pp. 3-29.
  37. Orshansky, M. 1969. How Poverty is Measured. Monthly Labor Review 92(2), pp. 26-41.
  38. Pew Research Center 2012. The Lost Decade of the Middle Class, available at http://www.pewsocialtrends.org/2012/08/22/the-lost-decade-of-the-middle-class/.
  39. Piketty, T. 2014. Capital in the Twenty-First Century. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
  40. Pressman, S. 2007. The Decline of the Middle Class: An International Perspective. Journal of Economic Issues 41(1), pp. 181-200.
  41. —2011. The Middle Class in Six Latin American Nations. Revista Problemas del Desarrollo 164, pp. 127-152.
  42. —2015. Understanding Piketty’s Capital in the Twenty-First Century. New York and London: Routledge.
  43. —2017. The Decline of the US Middle Class and the Hair-Raising Ascent of Donald Trump. Real World Economic Review 78, pp. 112-124.
  44. Putnam, R. 2015. Our Kids: The American Dream in Crisis. New York: Simon and Schuster.
  45. Segreto, L. 1997. Models of Control in Italian Capitalism from the Mixed Bank to
  46. Mediobanca, 1894-1993. Business and Economic History 26(2), pp. 649-661.
  47. Simons, H. 1938. Personal Income Taxation. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
  48. Thompson, W. and Hickey, J. 2005. Society in Focus. Boston: Pearson.
  49. Tinbergen, J. 1975. Income Distribution: Analysis and Policies. Amsterdam: North Holland.
  50. Wider Opportunities for Women 2010. The Basic Economic Security Tables for the United States, 2010. Washington, DC: Wider Opportunities for Women.
  51. Wood, A. 1994. North-South Trade, Employment and Inequality: Changing Fortunes in a Skill Driven World. Oxford: Clarendon Press.



  1. Remo Siza, Narrowing the gap: the middle class and the modernization of welfare in Italy in International Journal of Sociology and Social Policy /2018 pp. 116, DOI: 10.1108/IJSSP-02-2017-0011
  2. Remo Siza, Declines and divisions: the missing welfare needs of the majority in Journal of International and Comparative Social Policy /2019 pp. 211, DOI: 10.1080/21699763.2018.1559755

Steve Pressmann, in "SOCIOLOGIA E POLITICHE SOCIALI" 2/2017, pp. 45-65, DOI:10.3280/SP2017-002004

   

FrancoAngeli è membro della Publishers International Linking Association associazione indipendente e no profit per facilitare l'accesso degli studiosi ai contenuti digitali nelle pubblicazioni professionali e scientifiche