As Poverty Surges in Italy, Populists Propose a ‘Citizens’ Income’

From his perch at a waterfront bar in the Italian port of Livorno, Marco Di Tanto sees far more despair than charm. Although the center of town—an area called New Venice—has scenic streets and winding canals similar to its namesake, the Tuscan city is still reeling from the shutdown of the vast Orlando shipyard in 2002 and the shift of most freight traffic to bigger container ports in Genoa and Naples over the past two decades. “There’s no real work in Livorno anymore,” says Di Tanto, 58, who in 2009 lost his job as a forklift driver at the docks and now picks up informal construction work when he can. “I’ve seen my old colleagues queuing at the soup kitchen.”

That economic malaise is increasingly common across Italy, where unemployment tops 11 percent and the number of people living at or below the poverty line has nearly tripled since 2006, to 4.7 million last year, or almost 8 percent of the population, according to statistics agency Istat. These woes have made Livorno, where the Italian Communist Party was founded in 1921, a petri dish for ideas to help the poor ahead of national elections expected early next year. “Poverty will be center stage in the campaign,” says Giorgio Freddi, professor emeritus of political science at the University of Bologna. The populist Five Star Movement “has imposed the issue on national politics. The mainstream parties are being forced to play catch-up.”