Caritas reports highest-ever number of families assisted in Italy, driven by in-work poverty and ageing
The Catholic charity's annual report, released Tuesday, shows a 1.7% rise in assisted families and a 191% surge in over-65s seeking help over the past decade.
A record no one wanted
Caritas Italiana's 2026 poverty report, published on 16 June, documents that the charity accompanied 282,539 people across Italy in 2025, the highest figure ever recorded. Each person corresponds to an entire household, since the organisation's interventions target the whole family unit. The total represents a 1.7% increase on 2024, drawn from 3,520 computerised services in 206 dioceses covering 94.5% of the national network. The report's authors describe poverty as having lost its character of exception and temporariness, now taking on the contours of a "structural normality."
Nel 2025 sono state più di 282mila le persone che si sono fatte aiutare. È il dato più alto che abbiamo registrato negli ultimi anni. Nel 2019 c'era stato un calo, poi dalla pandemia in poi c'è stato un incremento costante.
The report notes no declines compared to the pre-pandemic period, confirming a poverty that is rooting itself and becoming a stable condition in many families' lives. Over the past decade, the total number of people assisted has grown by 48%.
Who is asking for help
More than half of those assisted, 52%, come from households with children under 18. The report also records 24,000 homeless people and many more struggling seriously with rent and utility bills. Foreign nationals make up 56% of the total, with Italians at 41%; in northern regions the share of immigrants reaches 60%, while in the south the pattern reverses, with a predominantly Italian user base.
- Foreign nationals
- 56 % of total
- Italians
- 41 % of total
- Households with children under 18
- 52 % of total
- People living alone
- 32.9 % of total
The most dramatic demographic shift is among the elderly. Over ten years, the number of over-65s encountered by Caritas has grown by 191%, against an overall user growth of 48%. Loneliness has deepened in parallel: people living alone rose from 23.8% to 32.9% of those assisted over the same period. The report frames this as a tightening knot of economic poverty, ageing, health fragility, weakening family networks, and social isolation.
The working poor
In-work poverty emerges as a central theme. Among those assisted, 31.7% of 35–44-year-olds and 31% of 45–54-year-olds hold a job but cannot escape economic vulnerability. Caritas Italiana director Don Marco Pagniello argued it is time for Italy to consider introducing a minimum wage.
In-work poverty is killing young people's dreams.
Caritas Italiana president Monsignor Benoni Ambarus linked the poverty crisis to broader spending priorities, questioning the logic of funding rearmament while human dignity goes under-resourced.
If the conditions exist to revive the issue of rearmament — and, in my opinion, it's dangerous — there must be room to strengthen human dignity. We are not a truly dignified, civilized society if we find money for weapons but not for humanity.
Health and housing pressures
Health needs have intensified sharply, rising 69% over the period covered, including psychological care demands. Housing remains one of the most delicate pressure points: the report describes vulnerability around accommodation as a persistent knot. The local Perugia-Città della Pieve diocese data, previewed by ANSA, shows numbers in line with, or slightly worse than, the national picture, with roughly half of all Umbria's Caritas-assisted people living in that diocese.
- Baseline year: working poor phenomenon first measured; people living alone at 23.8%.
- Pre-pandemic dip in assisted numbers recorded, followed by constant increase from 2020 onward.
- Previous year's total; 2025 figure represents a 1.7% rise.
- 282,539 people assisted — all-time high. Over-65s up 191% vs 2015; health needs up 69%; overall user growth at 48% over decade.
The report's overarching finding is that poverty is no longer a temporary setback but a chronic, self-reinforcing state. Life trajectories are frequently crossed by critical events, bereavements, separations, other biographical ruptures, that erode economic, relational, and social resources. Poverty, the dossier concludes, increasingly presents itself as a progressive thinning of bonds, of proximity relationships, and of the concrete possibility of being accompanied through moments of greatest difficulty.
