Cardinal Matteo Zuppi at the presentation of the first ‘Inequalities Report’ of the Cariplo Foundation
“Growing up in Italy, beyond inequalities” is not an easy job. The social elevator has been jammed for decades and it is difficult for today’s young people to consistently change their starting economic and cultural situation. The Cariplo Foundation presented its first report on inequalities yesterday in Milan, dedicated to education.
The starting point of the report is the new wave of poverty triggered by the pandemic. In 2021 there were two million families in conditions of absolute poverty, more than double compared to 2005. From 1980 to today, society has polarized. Compulsory education is unable to support the most disadvantaged students. Weaknesses spread and add up: there is a coexistence between different forms of exclusion and poverty. Those with a higher level of education have better general health conditions.
In Italy, only 8% of young people with parents without a higher education qualification manage to graduate (22% the OECD average).
The second part of the research related the initial inequalities with the expectations of young people. The Milan area acted as an “incubator” for an analysis in the field. Adolescents from a classical high school in the center and a vocational training institute in the suburbs were interviewed. The former showed greater confidence in others and in themselves, the latter greater determination. 55% of high school students plan to go abroad to study or work compared to 29% of other students.
Among the key themes that emerged was the need for an answer that calls all the actors into play, “synodal” as defined by the president of the CEI Matteo Zuppi.
The report is “a punch in the stomach” began Zuppi in his speech. «Poverty has increased: we must ask ourselves why this has happened? We must all examine our conscience, we have not heard the cry of pain of those behind us, we have not done enough or we have done things that are not needed. The pandemic has opened our eyes and pushed us towards a synodal dimension, all institutions must work together”.
The social elevator hasn’t broken recently, Zuppi underlined. «Poverty becomes a destiny, as can also be seen from the Caritas report: once it was not like this». The president of the bishops cited Pope Francis’ encyclical Fratelli tutti, recalling “the dreams of freedom and equality, justice and fraternity” and article three of the constitution which commits the state to removing obstacles to the development of the person. «Today it is not the merit that creates the possibilities but the starting point. I would like to make an advertising campaign for professional schools that must become Serie A. In Europe we need manpower but we don’t get it and this is not good. That of unaccompanied minors is the worst inequality, because there are so many of them and it is with difficulty that we manage to give them opportunities”.
The president of the Cariplo Foundation Giovanni Fosti underlined that in order to «undermine the dynamic where those with few opportunities are destined to have fewer and fewer opportunities, we cannot wait for these people to take the initiative, but we must deliberately and tenaciously “go and look for them”. ».
Society today is much more unequal and more unstable. The scholastic progress of the children depends directly on the level of education and wealth of the parents remarked Gian Paolo Barbetta of the Giordano dell’Amore Foundation: «Those who start badly in the first elementary classes will remain like this and this emerged by crossing the Invalsi tests of the second elementary with those of the eighth grade of the same boys». For Carlo Messina, CEO of Intesa San Paolo, action must be taken to stem the phenomenon of NEETs, three million young people who do not study and do not work, and female inactivity with as many as seven million women who do not have a job.
