Economic life cycle deficit and intergenerational transfers in Italy

Marina Zannella, Università di Roma "La Sapienza"
Graziella Caselli, Università di Roma "La Sapienza"

Italy has one of the most significant aging process in the world and this situation is expected to become even more serious in the future. Economic implications of population aging are still not clearly defined. However, some relations between different ages and economic conditions are generally valid: and the economic lifecycle is a key concept in order to understand them. In this paper, we estimate the economic lifecycle for Italy using National Transfer Accounts methodology. In particular, we control the existence of a lifecycle deficit and we identify which ages contribute to its formation. This allow us to state the directions of economic reallocations across ages. Then, given the peculiar Italian family model (characterized by close intergenerational ties, cohesiveness and solidarity), we focus our analysis on intra-family reallocations. We seek to quantify intra-household intergenerational flows and to give an insight of their role in the current Italian socio-economic environment.