Things are no better for 30–34-year-olds who have completed tertiary education: in Italy they are 27.4%, while in Europe the figure is 42.8%.
Italy’s employment rate in 2022 is also about 10 percentage points lower than the European average (74.7%). The serious gap in the proportion of women who work then stands out (55.0% in Italy compared with 69.4% for the EU average).
Among all the indicators, the one on which Italy undoubtedly ranks at the top of the EU table is survival. Life expectancy at birth is 82.5 years, while the EU average does not exceed 80.1. Italy also records one of the lowest homicide rates in Europe: 0.5 per hundred thousand inhabitants in 2020, well below the rest of Europe, where the average is 0.9.
Looking through the data for the individual domains, the report shows that for 58 well-being indicators, more than half of the total, there was an improvement in 2022 compared with the 2019 level. A third of the indicators are instead at a worse level than in 2019, while the remaining 13.8% remain stable at pre-pandemic levels.
The most widespread progress
Progress concerns the domains of Safety, Quality of services and Work and work-life balance, with over 72% of indicators improving compared with 2019. These are followed by the domains of Politics and institutions and Innovation, research and creativity: in these sectors two thirds of the indicators show an improvement.
The areas of difficulty
Let us turn to the domains in difficulty. Most of the worsening indicators are found in the sectors of Social relationships, Subjective well-being, Education and training (as mentioned above) and Economic well-being.
And the environment? It is in an intermediate situation, and this is not good news, given the pressing need to advance progress in this field. The percentage of indicators that have remained stable is substantial (about 31%), although half are instead improving compared with the pre-pandemic period.
The same applies to the domain Landscape and cultural heritage: equivalent shares of indicators improving and worsening (about 43%).
Regional, gender and age differences
Of the 131 Bes indicators that can be analysed at regional level, those showing high inequality concern the sectors of environment; landscape and cultural heritage; economic well-being; safety. Inequalities are less evident in health; education and training; social relationships; politics and institutions; subjective well-being.
Let us move on to gender. Between 2019 and 2022 most well-being measures (54.1%) improved for women, compared with 39.2% for men – for whom the measures mostly remained stable or worsened.
Despite this improvement, however, a gender disparity continues to be recorded for most indicators (of 86 in total, only 26 show gender parity, while 34 show a disadvantage for women and 26 a disadvantage for men).
Improvements then concern health, education and training. In safety, innovation, research and creativity there is substantial heterogeneity, “with some indicators showing an advantage for women and some an advantage for men”. Men record better conditions in the sectors of work and work-life balance, politics and institutions, social relationships, economic well-being and subjective well-being.
And we conclude with generational differences. While 52% of well-being indicators for adults (aged 45 to 54) improve compared with the pre-pandemic level (but 40% worsen), and while for young adults (25–34) the situation is fairly good (half of the indicators improve and 41% worsen), the minus sign is in the column of the youngest (14–24): only 44% of Bes indicators improve, while 43% worsen and 13% remain stable (for the other age groups it is 8%).
The worst indicators for the youth group concern social relationships: trust in others and having people they can count on. There is also the attitude of optimism towards the future, which, while rising among adults, is falling among young people. That is, those who should have the most hope for the future.
