This paper highlights the extent to which minimum income schemes in Italian regions improved the potential targeting and effectiveness of national minimum income measures introduced in 2017 and 2018. By exploiting detailed survey data on the income, wealth and living conditions of Italian households from the IT-SILC survey and applying micro-simulation techniques, I first provide estimates of the overall audience of potential recipients and assess the extent of low-income targeting. I then evaluate the extent to which national and regional minimum income schemes decrease poverty and income inequality indicators (i.e. the headcount ratio, the income gap ratio, the severe material deprivation rate and the Gini index). The results show that regional schemes broaden the set of potential recipients and the coverage rate of national schemes, while they only slightly decrease the incidence and intensity of poverty at the national level. Overall, the presence of complementary regional measures brings the national measure, namely the ‘universal’ Reddito di Inclusione, closer to other European minimum income schemes (using France, Germany and Spain as benchmarks) in terms of benefit adequacy. This provides evidence of the importance of taking into account programme complementarities and multi-level government interventions when evaluating the impacts of national policies.

本文着重介绍了意大利地区的最低收入计划在多大程度上提高了2017年和2018年推出的国家最低收入措施的潜在目标和有效性。通过利用有关IT部门对意大利家庭收入，财富和生活条件的详细调查数据，我通过SILC调查和应用微观模拟技术，首先提供了对潜在接收者的总体受众的估计，并评估了低收入目标群体的程度。然后，我评估了国家和地区最低收入计划在多大程度上减少了贫困和收入不平等指标（即，人员比率，收入差距比率，严重物质匮乏率和基尼系数）。结果表明，区域计划扩大了潜在接受者的范围，并扩大了国家计划的覆盖率，而在国家一级，它们只会稍微减少贫困的发生率和强度。总体而言，补充性区域措施的存在带来了国家措施，即“普遍性”Reddito di Inclusione在福利充足性方面更接近其他欧洲最低收入计划（以法国，德国和西班牙为基准）。这提供了证据，在评估国家政策的影响时，必须考虑到计划的互补性和政府的多层次干预措施的重要性。