Main results
The Survey on Household Income and Wealth has undergone significant methodological changes to improve the statistical coverage of indebted households and of high-income households. These changes have brought the estimates obtained through the survey considerably closer to the corresponding figures in the national accounts. Consistent with the improved ability to identify the population segments that hold proportionally higher shares of the variables of interest, the average values and the inequality indices of income and wealth based on the new sample design are significantly higher, though the incidence of the most common financial difficulties is largely unchanged.
Using appropriate statistical techniques which enable comparison with the previous editions of the survey, in 2020 the average income of Italian households, at constant prices and adjusted for household composition, was 3.7 per cent higher than in 2016, the last year for which the figure is available, but still almost 8 percentage points lower compared with the peak recorded in 2006, before the last three recessions that hit the Italian economy. Between 2016 and 2020 the Gini index of equivalent income, a composite indicator of the degree of inequality, remained practically unchanged, while there was a decrease in the share of low-income individuals, i.e. those whose share of equivalent income is below 60 per cent of the median value.
Average net wealth, valued at constant prices, rose by 1.7 per cent between 2016 and 2020, mainly thanks to the financial component, which was driven both by the growth in savings and the increased value of assets. The gap widened between the mean and the median values for net wealth, an indicator of the degree of inequality in its distribution. The Gini index of net household wealth rose by 3 percentage points.
The share of indebted households started increasing again, interrupting the decline underway since 2008. Among these households, there was a 4 percentage point decrease compared with 2016 in the share of financially vulnerable households (i.e. those with an equivalent income below the median level and a yearly debt service expenditure exceeding 30 per cent of their income). The broadening of the range of cases in which it was possible to obtain a debt moratorium in 2020 contributed to the decrease.
