Italy rated “one of the best countries in the world” to live in, according to OECD

The OECD Better Life Index is an interactive composite index that aggregates average measures of country's well-being outcomes through weights defined by users. 

What are those 11 indicators? Housing, health, environment, education, life satisfaction, community, job, work-life balance, civic engagement, ıncome, safety. 

In recent years, Italians have rather left the country for better job opportunities as well as better ıncome. Nevertheless, OECD Better Life Index shows that Italy is one of the best countries in the world to live in. Italy overcomes well-developed OECD countries, such as Denmark and Norway with a 9.4 rate on the work-life balance indicator.

The other indicators provide us with other interesting data. According to the overall safety indicator, Ttaly gets 8.0 and beats the world’s most well-developed country, the United States (7.5). In addition, although the employment rates in Italy are below the average of OECD countries, it surpasses countries such as Japan (3.6), South Korea (3.4), and Denmark (3.3).

Italy’s economy is recovering steadily from the COVID crisis, thanks to the vaccination campaign and generous fiscal support to households and firms. Risks to the outlook are large, including virus variants and the path of global interest rates. To raise growth and employment above pre-pandemic levels, the composition of public spending and taxes must improve. Together with implementation of the National Recovery and Resilience Plan (PNRR), which includes critical structural reforms and investments, this can help support a faster transition towards a greener, more digitised economy. 

Realising this will require a demanding set of legislative and administrative reforms. Improving civil justice, tax administration and public investment will be essential to raise income growth. Making more effective use of performance information and spending reviews can help reallocate public spending to the most growth-enhancing activities. Reviewing the existing stock of regulations and how they are enforced would improve the business environment. Agile recruitment and better assessing, rewarding and supporting the performance of public servants would fill growing skill gaps in the public workforce. Improving collaboration across Italy’s multiple layers of government would improve delivery of public services such as childcare and active labour market policies.

Let’s learn more about Italian data.

In Italy, the average household net-adjusted disposable income per capita is USD 29.431 a year, slightly lower than the OECD average of USD 30.490 a year.

In terms of employment, about 58% of people aged 15 to 64 in Italy have a paid job, below the OECD employment average of 66%. Some 67% of men are in paid work, compared with 49% of women. In Italy, 3% of employees work very long hours in paid work, below the OECD average of 10%, with 4% of men working very long hours in paid work compared with 2% of women.

Good education and skills are important requisites for finding a job. In Italy, 63% of adults aged 25-64 have completed upper secondary education, lower than the OECD average of 79%. However, completion varies between men and women, as 61% of men have successfully completed high school compared with 65% of women. In terms of the quality of the education system, the average student scored 477 in reading literacy, maths and science in the OECD's Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). This score is lower than the OECD average of 488. On average in Italy, girls outperformed boys by 2 points, below the average OECD gap of 5 points.

In terms of health, life expectancy at birth in Italy is around 84 years, three years higher than the OECD average of 81 years. Life expectancy for women is 86 years, compared with 81 for men. The level of atmospheric PM2.5 – tiny air pollutant particles small enough to enter and cause damage to the lungs – is 15.9 micrograms per cubic meter, above the OECD average of 14 micrograms per cubic meter. In Italy, 77% of people say they are satisfied with the quality of their water, lower than the OECD average of 84%.

Concerning the public sphere, there is a moderate sense of community and high levels of civic participation in Italy, where 89% of people believe that they know someone they could rely on in time of need, less than the OECD average of 91%. Voter turnout, a measure of citizens' participation in the political process, was 73% during recent elections, higher than the OECD average of 69%. Social and economic status can affect voting rates; voter turnout for the top 20% of the population is an estimated 82% and for the bottom 20% it is an estimated 62%.

When asked to rate their general satisfaction with life on a scale from 0 to 10, Italians gave it a 6.5 grade on average, lower than the OECD average of 6.7.