What Can We Do to Improve Child Health in Southern Italy?

September 2005 | Volume 2 | Issue 9 | e250 Two-thirds of all poor Italian families are in the south. Of the 20.7 million people (36.1% of Italians) living in southern Italy, 7.3 million (35.4%) are poor, living on less than 521 per month. Some 4.6 million of these people (63.3%) are extremely poor, living on less than 435 per month [1,2]. With such an economic profi le, if southern Italy was thought of as an independent European country, it would be the European country with the highest poverty rate, weighted for national income. In this article, we discuss health inequalities in Italy, with a particular focus on the very poor health status of children in southern Italy, and we ponder possible health policies to address these inequalities [3]. How does poverty in Italy compare with poverty in the rest of Europe? Within the 25 European Union countries, in 2001 about 68 million people lived on less than 60% of their respective national median income