Caritas report on poverty: 'we have never assisted so many families'

"In 2025, the Caritas network in Italy accompanied 282,539 people, a number that corresponds to an equal number of family units since the intervention always aims to respond to the needs of the entire household. This is the highest value ever recorded. Compared to 2024, there is a reported growth of +1.7%. The information comes from 3,520 computerized services distributed across 206 Italian dioceses (equal to 94.5% of the total), present in all 16 ecclesiastical regions of Italy and corresponding to approximately half of all Caritas services." This is stated in the Report "Poverty in Italy according to Caritas Network data," released today. "Poverty—the dossier reads—is increasingly tending to lose its character of exceptionality and temporariness, taking on the contours of a 'structural normality'." "No declines are recorded—the Report continues—compared to the period preceding the pandemic, confirming a poverty that tends to take root and become a stable condition in the lives of many families." Among the most significant trends is the increase in the elderly component. In ten years, the number of over-65s encountered by the Caritas network has grown by 191%, compared to an overall growth in users of 48%. This data draws attention to the increasingly tight intertwining of economic poverty, aging, health fragility, the weakening of family networks, and social isolation. Alongside aging, loneliness is also growing. In the same timeframe, the proportion of people living alone rose from 23.8% to 32.9%. Life trajectories are often crossed by critical events, such as bereavement, separation, or other forms of biographical rupture, which can compromise the availability of economic, relational, and social resources. From this perspective, poverty increasingly appears as a progressive thinning of ties, proximity relationships, and concrete possibilities of being supported during moments of greatest difficulty. The Report also highlights the strengthening of health needs (+69%), including those of a psychological nature, and the increasingly significant presence of working poor, a condition that takes on particular importance in middle-age groups, reaching 31.7% among 35-44 year olds and 31% among 45-54 year olds. These are people who, despite having employment, are unable to escape situations of economic and social vulnerability (in 2015, this phenomenon stood at 13.3%). "Families with children continue to represent the main core of the demand for help: indeed, 52% of the people assisted live with minor children." This is stated in the statistical Report prepared by Caritas Italia for the annual Report on Poverty, relating to the year 2025. "The issue of housing also remains very strong—the report reads—not only in its most extreme form of homelessness (over 24,000 'homeless' and 'unsheltered' people were encountered), but also in the growing difficulties related to managing a home: rent, utilities, ordinary expenses, precarious or inadequate housing conditions. Housing thus continues to represent one of the most delicate nodes of poverty in Italy, because it affects family stability, health, educational paths, and the very possibility of planning for the future." Finally, the data indicate a record, since the pre-pandemic period, of the presence of people in chronic poverty and the intensity of poverty, indicating a progressive distancing from the minimum threshold of economic well-being. The people encountered are, in many cases, increasingly poor and remain in this condition for longer and longer periods. Conversely, the share of new poor is decreasing, settling at 37.6%. In parallel, there is a gradual increase in the average family ISEE (from 4,315 euros to 4,974 euros), a figure that should not be interpreted as an improvement in economic conditions, but rather as a sign of an expanding group of families who, despite having slightly higher resources, still find themselves in conditions of fragility and require support. All rights reserved © Copyright ANSA