HHB Working Paper no. 9 – “No country for young people. Poverty and age in Italy, 1948-2018” – explores the changing risk of poverty for older and younger generations of Italians throughout the republican period.

The authors show that poverty rates have decreased steadily for all age groups, but that youth has been left behind: by 2016, children aged 0-17 are 5 times likelier to be poor than someone in the age range of their grandparents – an intergenerational reversal of fortune that is unprecedented in Italy’s post-WW2 history.

Massimo Baldini, Giulia Mancini, and Giovanni Vecchi also assess the impact of the Great Recession on living standards by age, finding that the young have been hit hardest, particularly in Southern regions. What explains the extra poverty risk associated with young age? Read the paper to find out.