How Pandemic Shock Affects Claim for Minimum Income Measures

Social transfers, and minimum income schemes in particular, are key tools to support people’s income and protect their living standards, especially in times of crisis. This paper aims to understand how the claiming of social benefits changed in response to the biggest crisis of recent years, i.e. the pandemic shock. In particular, we test whether the pandemic has reduced the transaction costs associated with claiming social transfers, increasing their spread across the population even controlling for recent recessive trends. We focus on Italy as an interesting case study, because it was the first Western country to be strongly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic and the latest EU country introducing a national minimum income scheme (the Reddito di Cittadinanza or RDC). Based on a rich dataset of statistics at NUTS-3 regional level, results show a significant and positive correlation between the spread of RDC recipients and the one of Covid-19 contagions, especially during the first stage of pandemic. This evidence confirms that lockdown measures strongly affected the economic wellbeing of households and, in turn, transaction costs associated with the RDC claim. Main results hold when relevant demographic and socioeconomic variables directly influencing the RDC claim are considered

Surnames in local newspapers and social mobility

This paper exploits an innovative data source, the surnames contained in local newspapers during almost a century in the Italian Province of Modena (NUTS-3 level), to study the phenomenon of social mobility over time. Based on the hypothesis that the surnames that appear in the newspapers have a particular social relevance, the study of changes in the frequency distribution of the set of surnames over time allows to identify periods of greater or lower social mobility. The results show that the periods of greatest change have been the years of transition between democracy and the fascist regime and vice versa, and the 1980s. A strong regression towards the mean in the relative importance of surnames is also observed

Il Reddito di Cittadinanza nei comuni della Città metropolitana di Bologna

Negli ultimi quindici anni l’incidenza della povertà assoluta è decisamente cresciuta in Italia. La principale misura introdotta per mitigarne gli effetti consiste nel Reddito di Cittadinanza, erogato a partire da aprile 2019. Questo lavoro è dedicato ad una descrizione dei dati sul numero delle famiglie beneficiarie del Reddito di Cittadinanza nei comuni e nei distretti della Città Metropolitana di Bologna. La quota dei beneficiari per comune viene messa in correlazione con variabili demografiche ed economiche per le quali disponiamo di indicatori a livello comunale. L’obiettivo è individuare quali sono le caratteristiche demografiche ed economiche della popolazione più frequentemente associate ad una maggiore diffusione del Reddito di Cittadinanza. I risultati evidenziano che il Rdc è più diffuso nelle zone montane e periferiche, mentre è stato meno in grado di raggiungere i territori caratterizzati da una popolazione più giovane e con famiglie numerose

Antimicrobial resistance of Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae isolated from swine

The aim of this retrospective study was to evaluate the antimicrobial resistance rates and the trend in resistance of Actinobacillus pleuropneumoniae isolated from pigs in Italy from 1994 to 2009. A total of 992 A. pleuropneumoniae isolates were tested for their susceptibility to a panel of antimicrobial agents in a disk diffusion method. Resistance to 7 drugs (amoxicillin, amoxicillin/clavulanic acid, ampicillin, cefquinome, cotrimoxazole, penicillin G and tilmicosin) showed a significant increasing trend over the time, while for 2 drugs (gentamycin and marbofloxacin) a significant decrease was observed. Resistance to the remaining 14 antimicrobial agents tested did not change significantly over the study period. Most of the isolates retained high susceptibility to antimicrobials usually effective against A. pleuropneumoniae such as amphenicols, fluoroquinolones and ceftiofur. However, high rates of resistance were observed for potentiated sulfa drugs, tetracyclines and penicillins which are currently recommended antimicrobials for pig pleuropneumonia therapy. Our results suggest the importance of continued monitoring of A. pleuropneumoniae clinical isolates in order to choose the most appropriate treatment of infections and to control the increase of resistance to currently used antimicrobials