The reform of the minimum income scheme in Italy: distributive effects

Exploiting an innovative administrative-survey-linked dataset for Italy recording household consumption expenditure, absolute poverty status and receipt of social benefits in 2019 and individuals’ longitudinal working histories, the article investigates the distributive effects of the reform of the Italian minimum income scheme that, starting from January 2024, has replaced the former Reddito di Cittadinanza (RDC) with a new benefit, named Assegno di inclusione (ADI), that only protects some categories of households according to the characteristics of their members. The analysis follows three prospects: i) inquiring who are winners and losers from the reform; ii) evaluating the effects of the reform on absolute poverty and consumption inequality; iii) estimating, based on past working histories, if the choice of excluding some individuals from the ADI coverage is consistent with their actual employability.