Measuring Wellbeing: A History of Italian Living Standards

In 150 years Italy transformed itself from a poor and backward country into one where living standards are among the highest in the world. In Measuring Wellbeing, Giovanni Vecchi provides an innovative analysis of this change by drawing on family accounts that provide engaging insights into life and are the "micro" data that create the foundations for the "macro" picture of variations and fluctuations in the development of Italy. Vecchi provides a nuanced account of the changes. He emphasizes that the concept of wellbeing is multidimensional and must include non-monetary aspects of life: nutrition, health and education, as well as less tangible elements such as freedom or the possibility to exercise one's political rights. The book deals with this polyhedral nature of wellbeing. Among the insights are that Italians succeeded in combining growth with equity, but that the gap between the North and South did not narrow; the while longevity has increased, education has not improved as much as it could have; and that for close to three decades, Italy's virtuous path has come to a halt: the wellbeing of the Italian people is at the crossroads between progress and decline. Measuring Wellbeing engagingly combines a unique dataset and an innovative statistical method that can be adapted to other countries.

About the Author :
Giovanni Vecchi is Professor of Economics at the University of Rome "Tor Vergata". He serves the World Bank as a consultant on poverty and inequality analysis, and has advised governments and international agencies on this subject. He has written extensively on Italian economic history. He is President of the Italian Economic History Association (Associazione per la Storia Economica) and co-editor of Rivista di Storia Economica.

Review :
"Measuring Wellbeing offers a multidimensional, quantitative analysis of Italian living standards from the country's unification in 1861 to the present day... This is an innovative and important work and ought to interest both economists and historians." -- EH.Net "This is an important book for Italians, and it makes a remarkable contribution to the description of the long-term evolution of standards of living in Italy." -- Marc Fleurbaey, Robert E. Kuenne Professor of Economics and Humanistic Studies and Professor of Public Affairs at the Center for Human Values at Princeton University "This amazing and novel book on Italian inequality, poverty, and living standards since unification has no competitor. Certainly not in English, which is used here with great elegance. And perhaps not even in the whole EU. Anyone involved in policy debate over inequality and poverty in modern Italy and the EU must read this book about origins." -- Jeffrey G. Williamson, Laird Bell Professor of Economics, emeritus, Harvard University and Honorary Fellow, Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin "A fascinating economic history of how Italian living standards have evolved over 150 years emerges from this study's painstaking work assembling and harmonizing historical data on household budgets, in combination with modern surveys and other data. Long-run social progress is evident, but so are the challenges for the future. I look forward to seeing further work from this project." -- Martin Ravallion, Georgetown University and author of The Economics of Poverty: History, Measurement, and Policy "In this pioneering book, Giovanni Vecchi traces welfare, inequality and poverty of Italy from its reunification to today. Very few countries may boast of such a panoramic view of their economic history, as Italy can, thanks to Vecchi's work. His methodological innovation, the use of historical household budgets -- monthly or weekly expenses written down by thousands of families -- to study the evolution of living standards enables us to learn about the lives of the previous generations more than we ever expected. We are thus, through Vecchi's approach, rediscovering own economic history." -- Branko Milanovic, Graduate Center, City University of New York, and author of Global Inequality