The onset of the pandemic and its spread have affected families’ concern for their income, the possibility of meeting their financial commitments and the fear of not being able to maintain the standard of living they had before the virus put everything at risk. The danger is, of course, felt more strongly by families who were already in greater difficulty.
The Bank of Italy investigation
Two years after the start of the pandemic, there is obviously still widespread apprehension about their present and the future of their economic capacity. After the strong initial shock, it cannot be said that we have returned to the starting point, but it seems that during these almost 2 years of circulation of the virus, families have attenuated the perception about the uncertainty about their income tomorrow.
This, in short, is the interpretation that can be made of the results of the 6 extraordinary surveys on families, carried out by Bank of Italy, to monitor the economic reaction of families to the spread of the virus. These sample surveys, with each of which at least 2 thousand people were always interviewed, were published between June 2020 and November 2021 and cover the period between the end of April and the beginning of May 2020 and the end of August and early September 2021.
The impact of the lockdown
In the first 2 months of confinement at home, the closure of part of the factories and other economic activities, half of the families interviewed experienced a reduction in income. The blow was particularly hard for families whose income derived from precarious dependent work or from the daily income of self-employed activities: the income of employees and workers was reduced by at least half in 1 case out of 2 and that of traders, artisans and professionals 2 times out of 3.
Although theInps continued to payre them the same pre-pandemic amounts, even for 20% of retirees the income was halved. Most likely they were people who supplemented a relatively low annuity with income from renting a property or with the income obtained by continuing to do some work.
The progressive reopening
The gradual reopening of factories, laboratories, professional activities and the measures put in place by the Government to support people and economic activities, already starting from the end of August last year seem to have acted as a barrier to the negative effects on the income of the persistence of the virus: the second survey carried out by the central bank found that 68% of the total number of households had an unchanged income, with an increase of 20 percentage points compared to the March-April survey. In subsequent monitoring, the fluctuations around this level were a few percent.
However, the prospects for an improvement in household income have always been relatively modest. Even if, with the evolution of the pandemic situation, there must be a narrowing of the area of pessimism: within 1 year, families that foresee a reduction in their income compared to the level reached before the health emergency four to one in seven.
Savings penalized
This does not seem to have greatly improved the chances of saving: the share of households that in each survey expects to be able to set aside a few euros in the next 12 months has fluctuated between 42 and 44 per cent; the majority of them therefore saw a prospect of zero savings or even the need to borrow to cover their expenses.
In the latest survey, only 3 out of 10 families declared that they had saved something; they are likely to be those with the highest incomes, which would also justify the increase in deposits in current accounts recorded during the pandemic.
However, we must not forget that the virus fell on a condition that for many families was already more than precarious: half of them with their disposable income struggled to make it to the end of the month.