Percorsi di secondo welfare è felice di segnalare la pubblicazione del Working Paper 2/2019 della collana 2WEL, curato da Marco Ranuzzini e Giovanni Gallo. Il documento, scritto in lingua inglese, intende comprendere se e come gli empori della solidarietà – che in questi anni si sono ampiamente diffusi nel nostro Paese – possano essere considerati un’idea realmente innovativa per affrontare efficacemente la povertà delle famiglie. L’analisi è stata svolta prendendo in considerazione l’esperienza di Portobello, emporio della solidarietà nato a Modena nel 2013.
The authors
Marco Ranuzzini is a civil servant in education services in a local government. He got the PhD title at the Marco Biagi Foundation, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, and he was visiting student at the University of Trento. His research interests regard the evaluation of public policies at the local level in Italy.
Giovanni Gallo is a postdoc research fellow at the National Institute for the Analysis of Public Policies (INAPP). He got the PhD title at the Marco Biagi Foundation, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, and he was visiting scholar at the Tilburg University and the LISER. His research fields regard the evaluation of public policies, poverty, and inequality.
Abstract
Among charitable food redistribution activities, emporia of solidarity can be considered an innovative idea in local welfare systems in Italy, since they try to meet poor households’ needs in an effective way, ensuring structured food provision. In this paper we ask to what extent an emporium of solidarity affects poverty conditions of its recipients, and whether it generates net social benefits to different actors involved in a typical year of activity. In order to answer these questions, we firstly provide the impact of six social indicators on the living conditions of beneficiaries; secondly, we elaborate a social cost-benefit framework. Our case study suggests that an emporium can be efficient in term of use of resources and it can generate positive returns for the actors involved, implementing a redistribution of goods towards poor households. But the emporium significantly reduces the monetary poverty only, while it is ineffective on the severe material deprivation due to the persistence in poverty of food recipients. Hence an emporium tries to alleviate persistent hardship and creates benefits for different actors, yet making evident persistent needs, underlying the necessity for a much wider approach to poverty reduction.