The official site of Italy's central bank

No. 11 - A century of social statistics: Persistence of differences or convergence between the Italian regions?

This research paper re-creates the ten-year time series of some social statistics on the Italian regions throughout the 20th century. The study focuses on the indicators associated with the concept of social capital, analyzing them from a number of viewpoints to identify specific indicators of the extent of social participation, political participation and trust. A variable is then constructed synthesizing the total social capital of the area. The aim of the paper is to ascertain whether regional differences in social capital endowment are persistent or convergent. An absolute and relative convergence test is then run on the time series of regional data, the standard deviations are broken down into an inter-regional part and an intra-regional part, and the construction of transition matrixes is undertaken.