“The crisis of the traditional public systems of social protection has spurred the search for new ways to respond to citizens’ needs.” The First Report on Second Welfare in Italy 2013 refers to initiatives carried out by companies, associations, foundations and other third sector organisations that the authors of the study, edited by Franca Maino and Maurizio Ferrera, count under the definition of second welfare:

• second in time: these are forms grafted onto the trunk of “first” welfare, the one
  built by the State during the twentieth century, above all during the three golden
  decades of postwar prosperity (1945-1975);
• secondary in function: second welfare comes in addition to the schemes of first welfare,
  bridges its gaps, and spurs its modernization by trying out new organization,
  management, and financial models and venturing into spheres of need as yet unexplored
  (and in part unexplorable) by the public.

The report is based on data reflecting the current experiences of transformation of the Italian wefare state. On this basis it offers impact assessment of second welfare and discusses social innovation in Italy from a European perspective. It describes achievements and promises of second welfare like:

• its growing economic importance
• identification of social risks most neglected by the Italian
  public welfare model
• innovative solutions in terms of governance, organization
  and intervention mechanisms
• entrepreneurship and creativity of local welfare
• its role in alleviating the social consequences of the economic
  crisis

It describes the main players in second welfare in Italy (enterprise system and trade unions, the insurance world, the third sector, and Foundations) both from functional and developmental point of view. The second part examines certain experiences deemed emblematic in Italy’s second welfare. It aims to
be a starting point for an empirically grounded and pragmatic debate of the concept.

The Report is the result of the two-year work of the Percorsi di secondo welfare (“paths of second welfare”) project, carried out by Turin’s Centro di Ricerca e Documentazione Luigi Einaudi in collaboration with the Department of Social and Political Sciences at Università degli Studi di Milano.

You can download an extract of the Report on Second Welfare in Italy in English (448KB).

For more background information and the full report in Italian click here.