Soup kitchens are ever more crowded in Italy. According to a study by UECoop presented in Rome, there are over one million foreigners and people from the Roma ethnic group in need of food aid in Italy in the form of food packages.
The report on poverty showed that this was over one third of the 2.7 million total who received this form of support in Italy in 2017, according to data on food aid distributed with FEAD funds.
Food aid necessary for one in every five foreigners
Over 20% of the 5.1 million foreigners in Italy - calculated on the basis of ISTAT demographic figures for 2017. The study found that families that are entirely of foreign origins find it much harder than Italian ones to make it to the end of the month, with average Italian household spending some 56% more than that of foreigners, who tend to spend about a thousand euros less (1,679 euros compared with 2,624). A lack of money obliges families composed only of migrants to concentrate their spending on essential goods and services: an average of 22% is spent on food and 36.8% on housing.
Only for communications is migrant household spending higher, due to the need to contact relatives and friends in their countries of origin. Almost 1 in every 3 foreign families in absolute poverty The researchers noted that almost one foreign family in every three (29.2%) are in absolute poverty, compared with 5.1% of families with only Italians, with peaks as high as over 40% in southern Italy.
The level of education of foreigners is also lower than that of Italians: among the foreigners between 15 and 64, over half have only a middle school education, 35.1% have a high school diploma and 10.7% are university graduates, compared with 17.2% of Italians in the same age bracket.