Conte and Tridico are clumsily manipulating the poverty figures. ‘Reddito 2.0’ is a case of déjà vu

Sometimes they come back. In the interviews accompanying the policy roundtables of the ‘Campo Largo’ initiative, the M5S is reviving the idea of introducing a Citizenship Income 2.0. The premise is that poverty in Italy has increased. Pasquale Tridico, an economist and former president of INPS—someone who ought to know the figures—provided a statistic to Corriere della Sera: “Relative and absolute poverty have both risen today compared with 2023.”

If the professor of economics—the most knowledgeable member of the team on the subject—says so, then the party leader, Professor Giuseppe Conte, has no choice but to accept the figure at face value: “Under Meloni, from the end of 2022 to the present day, the total number of people living in absolute or relative poverty has risen, with the combined figure exceeding 14 million individuals,” the former prime minister told Il Sole 24 Ore, citing the calculations drawn up by Tridico.

It is regrettable that the ‘combined provisions’, in this case, amount to a ‘combined blunder’. Because Conte and Tridico, in order to arrive at the figure that is supposed to demonstrate the failure of the Meloni government, are counting the same people twice. Absolute poverty is, in fact, a subset of relative poverty. In short, the two university professors have made a trivial error in addition and set theory – two concepts that require neither a degree nor a professorship, but merely a basic school education. It would be akin to adding the population of Palermo to that of Sicily to determine how many people live on the island, or adding those under 18 to those under 34 to calculate the number of young people: in the past, such an error would have resulted in failing primary school, let alone drafting a programme to govern the country.

The Istat figures, however, tell a different story from that suggested by Tridico. In 2022, there were 5.7 million people living in absolute poverty; by 2025, this figure had fallen to 5.4 million. Relative poverty, on the other hand, rose from around 8.2 to 8.7 million. These are two different indicators, constructed using different criteria: absolute poverty measures the inability to afford a basket of essential goods and services, whilst relative poverty measures the broader group of people who are at a disadvantage compared to the average consumption levels of society. These are not two independent groups that can simply be placed side by side and added together at will. Above all, one cannot use the rise in one indicator to argue that the other has also risen. Absolute poverty, the most severe form, has fallen slightly. This is no minor detail, particularly when proposing a measure such as the Rdc, which is specifically intended for those in absolute poverty and not for those in relative poverty (moreover, if one considers other measures of relative poverty, such as Eurostat’s ‘at risk of poverty’ indicator, which is based on income rather than consumption, there has been a decline from 20.1 per cent in 2022 to 18.6 per cent in 2025).

But this political spin does not stop at the statistics. There is also an attempt to present ‘Reddito 2.0’ as a measure that is fundamentally different from the original one, on the grounds that, in the meantime, the M5S has learnt from past mistakes. Conte speaks of an “evolution”, whilst Tridico refers to a reform of the part relating to active labour market policies. And that is enough for the allied parties, including those that had voted against the introduction of the Rdc, such as the PD. In reality, there is absolutely nothing new here.

Reddito 2.0, as described by the M5S, restores support to the ‘employable’ as well – that is, people of working age whom the Meloni government’s reform excluded from the Inclusion Allowance (ADI). Just as before. It would also provide tax relief for businesses that hire beneficiaries (as before), community service projects run by local councils (as before), training requirements (as before) and an online platform to match job seekers with vacancies (as before). All these features, for better or worse (more for the worse than the better), already existed in the pilot version of the Rdc. Even then, the benefit was intended for the ‘employable’ (with the famous ‘anti-sofa rules’ touted by the then leader of the M5S, Luigi Di Maio), even then there were incentives for businesses to take on staff; even then, beneficiaries were expected to take part in community-benefiting projects organised by local councils; even then, the employment centres were responsible for administering the scheme; and even then, the introduction of a new ‘platform’ was promised, which was supposed to magically ‘match’ labour supply and demand. The key figures remain the same: Giuseppe Conte, who was Prime Minister, and Pasquale Tridico, who was economic adviser to Minister Di Maio and later became president of the INPS.

In this revival of this old tool, the only things missing are the navigators and their captain, Mimmo Parisi, the Italian-American who set sail from the Mississippi to become president of ANPAL and revolutionise Italy’s active labour market policies with a prodigious piece of software that would have eradicated poverty and unemployment. His absence is keenly felt, because he is a professor of statistics who used to say bizarre things but would certainly have been able to explain to his two fellow professors, Conte and Tridico, that you cannot add pears and apples together – nor apples that have already been counted in the same basket. Parisi, following a disastrous tenure, was sacked by the Minister for Labour, Andrea Orlando, with the arrival of the Draghi government. Few anticipated that the country might one day miss his expertise.