Italy is one of the European Union (EU) countries hit hardest by the 2008 financial crisis and it is also the slowest in recovering, even compared to other Mediterranean countries that share some of its societal features. Poverty has steadily increased throughout the period following 2008, and no indication of a trend reversal was yet visible when, in late February 2020, coronavirus (COVID-19) hit the country with unexpected violence. The dramatic sudden increase in poverty caused by the lockdown of most activities, therefore, occurred in a country that had not yet recovered from the 2008 financial crisis.

This book presents the argument that the duration and depth of the crisis in Italy, and its impact on poverty, are largely a consequence of the long-term structural features of the Italian economy and its social safety net, which government choices, in reaction to the crisis (and under pressure from the EU), have further strengthened.

Long before the global downturn, within a persistent North/South divide in Italy, the national economy was struggling with protracted sluggish growth. The traditional duality of the labour market, with its substantial informal and grey economies, had also developed into a duality within the formal sector with the introduction since the 1990s of new, more flexible and precarious labour contracts. These were (and largely still are) concentrated among the young, whose entry to and stabilisation in the labour market has become increasingly delayed and insecure. Finally, women's labour force participation has remained systematically low, particularly in the South and among the less educated. The steady increase initiated in the 1990s, in fact, proceeded at a much slower pace than in other countries, such as Spain, which had a similar or even lower starting point, at the same time widening intra-country cross-educational and cross-regional differences, with a gap of over 20 points in women's employment between the Centre-North and the South. Single-earner households are therefore quite widespread in Italy, particularly when children are present, but particularly so among the lower-educated and in the South. Together with jobless households, which are also more present in the South, these households are the most at risk of poverty. The phenomenon of the working-poor, in fact, although it increased with the financial crisis, is far from a novelty in Italy.