Passive modernization? The new human development index and its components in Italy's regions (1871–2007)

Abstract

ABSTRACT:The article presents and discusses estimates of social and economic indicators for Italy's regions in benchmark years roughly from Unification to the present day: life expectancy, education, GDP per capita at purchasing power parity, and the new Human Development Index (HDI). A broad interpretative hypothesis, based on the distinction between passive and active modernization, is proposed to account for the evolution of regional imbalances over the long-run. In the lack of active modernization, Southern Italy converged thanks to passive modernization, i.e., State intervention: however, this was more effective in life expectancy, less successful in education, expensive and as a whole ineffective in GDP. As a consequence, convergence in the HDI occurred from the late XIX century to the 1970s, but came to a sudden halt in the last decades of the XX century.Keywords: Italy, regional growth, human development, GDP, education, life expectancy JEL Classification: N30, N33, N34, N90, O15 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: we would like to thank Giovanni Federico, Leandro Prados de la Escosura and Giovanni Vecchi, for precious comments and for sharing unpublished data with us; we are also grateful to Alessandro Nuvolari and Pierangelo Toninelli for their advice. Emanuele

GDP and life expectancy in Italy and Spain over the long run: A time-series approach

“…24 A similar case can be made for the convergence of Southern Italy, whose mortality trends, when compared to the Centre-North of the peninsula (Felice and Vasta 2015), display features similar to those of Spain.…”

“…18 For Italy, see Sorrentino and Vecchi (2011: 12); for Spain, see Cussó Segura (2005). 19 For Italy, see Felice and Vasta (2015); for Spain, see Prados de la Escosura (2010b). 20 It is worth noting that such a correlation holds for modern times as well, as shown most noticeably by the well-known Preston (1975) curve, but is now probably less strong, allowing for important exceptions such as the 'Jamaica paradox', i.e., countries with low GDP and high life expectancy (Riley 2005).…”

“…For Italy, a wide range of social indicators in benchmark years has been published in a recent book by Giovanni Vecchi (2011). An alternative and more recent estimate has also been published in the case of life expectancy, in benchmark years from 1871 to the present day (Felice and Vasta 2015). For Spain, the Nisal research project has made available a wide range of social and well-being indicators, including historical estimates of life expectancy previously published by Roser Nicolau (2005).…”

“…For Italy, the basic references are the estimates recently published by Felice and Vasta (2015), in benchmark years spanning from 1871 to 2007. From 1911 onwards these estimates are roughly the same as those published in the HMD.…”

“…11 We obtain per capita series using the total population present in the country, rather than the resident population, 12 since the former is the most appropriate when dealing with gross domestic product. 13 In the case of life expectancy, we link the most updated estimates -for Italy in benchmark years (Felice and Vasta 2015) and for Spain in yearly series (Blanes Llorens 2007) -with previously available series on life expectancy or mortality, in order to produce long-run comparable series running from 1861 to 2008.…”