Growth and Inequality in Italy Over the Long Run (1871-2001): Trends, Patterns, Implications

• Author: Emanuele Felice
• Position: Professor of Economics and Economic History, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain
• Pages: 374-394

European Integration - Realities and Perspectives 2012

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Growth and Inequality in Italy

Over the Long Run (1871-2001): Trends, Patterns, Implications

Emanuele Felice

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Abstract: This article presents estimates of social and economic indicators for Italy and its regions, from

1871 to 2001: life expectancy, education (literacy and years of schooling), per capita Gdp, and the human

development index. I discuss State intervention in pr omoting convergence and argue that this was more

effective i n life expectancy, important but inadequate in education, more expensive and less s uccessful in

Gdp. In human development, convergence took place fr om the late nineteenth century until the 1970s, then

significantly slowed down. A broad interpretative hypothesis, based on the distinction between passive and

active modernization, is proposed to account for the patterns.

Keywords: Italy; Regional development; Hdi; Gdp; State intervention

Les observations sont l’histoire de la physique, et les systèmes en sont la fable.

(Montesquieu, Pensées, no. 163)

1. Introduction

Italy’s regional inequality has been vastly debated, but the reconstruction of the historical pattern is

not satisfactory yet. In terms of Gdp, there is by now large consensus on some basic facts regarding

the previous century, which can be summarized as follows:

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North-South differentials increased in the

first half, until the Second World War, whereas at the same time regional differences decreased within

the three economic macro-regions (North-West, North-East and Center, South or Mezzogiorno);

South’s convergence took place in the economic boom of the 1950s and 1960s, but came to a halt in

the 1970s and the Mezzogiorno remained far below the national average, unlike the north-eastern and

central regions which converged toward the North-West in the last decades. Still there is uncertainty

surrounding post-Unification Italy, the determinants over the short and the long run, as well as specific

economic indicators and sometimes the exact figures and the pace of convergence and divergence; but

not the general pattern mentioned above. This speaks about the failure of southern Italy to catch-up

with the rest of the country over the long-run: all the more a dismal result, because the problem of the

South (or questione meridionale) has been in the political agenda for over a century, the convergence

of the economic boom had raised many hopes to bridge the economic divide, and since – not least –

massive regional policies were pursued by the Italian state throughout the second half of the twentieth

century. More recently, frustration left room to resignation, from which in the last decades a new

approach to the ‘Southern Question’ has emerged: based on the category of ‘diversity’, rather than of

‘backwardness’, when it comes to compare the South with the rest of the country. With important

exceptions,

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many ‘meridionalists’

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got progressively involved in this reconsideration:

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once it was

1

Professor of Economics and Economic History, Autonomous University of Barcelona, Spain, Address: Plaça Cívica

08193 Bellaterra, Cerdanyola del Vallès, Tel.: +34 93 581 11 11, Corresponding author: emanuele.felice@gmail.com

2

Felice, “Regional Development.” With reference to Post-Unification Italy, see also Fenoaltea, “Peeking Backward.”

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E.g. Galasso, Il Mezzogiorno.

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As scholars on southern Italy are usua lly called: such a label may be analogous to those (orientalists, africanists) proposed

for researchers on countries with struc tural characteristics supposedly diff erent from those of the western world, and which

therefore may also obey different rules of historical and social inquiry. See Said, Orientalism.

Performance and Risks in the European Economy

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realized that western progress was partly denied to the South, this turned out to be unworthy or

undesirable. As efficaciously noted, these meridionalists looked like such a husband who, having been

betrayed by his wife, would go around speaking against all the women in the world.

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This paper assumes that (western) progress – here called ‘modernization’ – is worthy and, after all,

desirable; thus the lack of convergence in per capita Gdp should be regarded for what it is, a

disappointing (and not at all inescapable) conclusion. But things are a bit more complicated and here

we propose a more articulated picture to account for the inequality pattern in Italy’s regions. First,

progress or modernization has many facets and surely it should not be measured only in terms of per

capita Gdp. Secondly, the South’s performance could not be so gloomy, when considering other

measures such as life expectancy or human development. Not least, so far very few research has been

made in order to relate the different facets of modernization, and even less to build an interpretative

framework which would allow for their different paths: scarce empirical work for southern Italy, few

historical analysis for other regions and countries too.

The article aims to move some steps toward this goal, via reviewing and testing the hypothesis of

‘passive modernization’ first advanced by Luciano Cafagna more than twenty years ago, and thus by

presenting and discussing the pattern of social indicators in Italy’s regions over the long run (1871-

2001) in view of this possible interpretative framework. In the following paragraph the basic concepts

about active and passive modernization will be exposed and partly re-formulated with regard to

regional analysis. The second, third, and fourth paragraph will focus on the historical evidence for

Italy’s regions, by examining the regional figures for life expectancy, education, and income and

human development respectively, and by discussing their convergence and determinants. The last

paragraph will propose a synthesis and a draft scheme to account for state intervention and passive

modernization in Italy’s regions, to be possibly tested in other contexts.

2. On Modernization

We define modernization in a way more inclusive than the strict economic approach. This latter is

focused on technological progress, whose result – broadly speaking – is the rise in productivity and

thus in per capita income: accordingly, per capita (or per worker) Gdp should be taken as the prime

measure of modernization. To Gdp (or ‘resources’), we add two more ‘dimensions’,

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following the

capability and human development approach as defined among the others by Sen.

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One dimension is

life expectancy, or ‘longevity’, which reflects a broad range of social characteristic and dynamics,

such as the health systems and conditions, the spread of basic hygienic infrastructures, as well as in

part the demographic transition. Many would agree that these are crucial aspects of modernity, not

entirely neither properly incorporated in Gdp measures; moreover, we should assume that to live a

long and healthy life is by itself a positive goal of every human being. The third dimension is

‘knowledge’, here measured through education (literacy, school attendance, per capita years of

schooling): again, the spread of mass education, primary and later secondary and tertiary, is another

remarkable feature of modernity, not directly included in Gdp accounts.

Resources, longevity, and knowledge are often correlated: education may be a determinant of Gdp

growth – literature would be huge, from the early remarks by Cipolla

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or Abramovitz

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up to the

bayeasian models

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– but indeed it has been argued that longevity too may favour a rise in per capita

Gdp, for example via increasing productivity, i.e. human capital accumulation.

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In turn, per capita Gdp

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E.g. Cassano, Il pensiero.

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Cafagna, “Modernizzazione,” p. 240.

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As the components of the human development index are usually referred to in theoretical literature.

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Sen, Commodities and Capabilities; Anand and Sen, “Human Development Index.”

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Cipolla, Literacy and Development.

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Abramovitz, “Catching up.”

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Sala-i-Martin et al., “Determinants.”

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Acemoglu and Johnson, “Disease and Development,” are proba bly the last ones; Barro and Lee, “Sources,” the first ones, at

least via econometric testing.