Librería Portfolio

presents a novel, innovative database, using a dataset that includes around 20,000 household budgets covering the period 1861-1931, and data collected from the Bank of Italy in its Survey of Household Income and Wealth from 1967 onwards
combination of a unique dataset and an innovative statistical method places this study at the cutting edge of the literature
Method can be easily adapted and applied to other countries, certainly to those for which 19th-century household budget data are available
There is a growing interest in the understanding of long-term evolutions in the distribution of income



Italy - born as one nation on March 17, 1861 - was a poor and backward country in the most Southern part of Europe. Most Italians lived a short and troubled life, with little prospect of giving their children a better future. That was how it had been for centuries in the Italian peninsula. In one and half centuries, the Italians astonished us by turning Italy into a country where living standards are among the highest in the world. The Dolce Vita found its home in Italy. How did such a transformation come about? The book provides an answer based on an impressive volume of newly-constructed historical statistics, and does so aided by an easilyt accessible and enjoyable narrative.

In more than 20 years of research, Giovanni Vecchi has gathered tens of thousands of family accounts, so that the themes of economic inequality, poverty and vulnerability can at last be placed at the centre of the book. This history is written from the bottom up, starting with the elementary data, those coming from the lives of individuals and households. Measuring Wellbeing builds up the ´macro´ picture (the history) from the ´micro´ data (the stories).

The concept of wellbeing is, by its very nature, multidimensional and must therefore include the non-monetary aspects of life: nutrition, health and education, but also less tangible elements such as freedom or the possibility to exercise one´s political rights. The book deals with this polyhedral nature of wellbeing using a uniform method. Great effort has been taken not to exercise the reader with technical details, but tables and graphs have nevertheless been included because they are decisive tools for readers to gain insight and keep up their guard against the fallacy of what at first sight may seem to be incontrovertible.



Table of Contents

Chapter 1 - Nutrition
Chapter 2 - Height
Chapter 3 - Health
Chapter 4 - Child Labour
Chapter 5 - Education
Chapter 6 - Migration
Chapter 7 - Income
Chapter 8 - Inequality
Chapter 9 - Poverty
Chapter 10 - Wealth
Chapter 11 - Vulnerability
Chapter 12 - Human Development
Chapter 13 - Household Budgets
Chapter 14 - Cost of Living