A new study says that three mil­lion peo­ple in Italy live in absolute poverty. The sta­tis­tics ser­vice ISTAT defines absolute poverty as hav­ing less than what is deemed essen­tial for life.

From this Agence France-Presse story that we found at News.Com.Au, we read more stats from the survey.

Absolute poverty is defined by the “inca­pac­ity to acquire goods and ser­vices nec­es­sary to attain a lifestyle held as the min­i­mum accept­able,” which means every­thing from food, cloth­ing and edu­ca­tion to med­ical care or entertainment.

The num­ber of fam­i­lies falling below Italy’s poverty line is 1.126 mil­lion, the institute’s report said, 2.893 mil­lion indi­vid­u­als or 4.6 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion, although the num­bers are broadly in line with 2007 figures.

In the south­ern Mez­zo­giorno region, the rate has shot up from 5.8 per cent to 7.9 per cent in the new annual results.

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