Umbria's economy is better than the best regions of Germany

From metric tons

Umbria is one of the richest regions in Europe. This is proven by a study conducted by Edison based on Eurostat 2022 data. Precisely, this is why, among European countries, the risk of their population ending up in poverty is the lowest. It means among the least poor, which is why we allow ourselves to translate among the rich, even if it is not technically orthodox to state it in those terms.

However, this conclusion can be reached by trying to perform an exercise that is not difficult. This means taking as reference the criterion of GDP, i.e. national or regional wealth, and, more importantly, purchasing power parity, i.e. calculating GDP per capita at purchasing power parity. This eliminates the disparity in prices between people from different regions in Europe. By these criteria, we discover that Italy is generally not among the regions most lagging behind, as Greece might be. But what is even simpler is that Italy lags behind the entire south, and so the large pockets of poverty and the entire north-central are among the more developed regions.

So it happens that if EU GDP per capita is 100, then Germany is 117, France is 100, Italy is 97, Spain is 86. And if the measure is people at risk of poverty, again for 2022, France is 21%, Germany 21%, Italy 24%, Spain 26%.

If we move from countries to regions we discover that Umbria is among the regions with the lowest poverty risk in the European Union. Italy has 7 regions that are among the highest in Europe in terms of the least risk of poverty. Umbria ranks third in the European Union, after Aosta with 8.6% of poverty risk, followed by Emilia-Romagna with 9.6%, then Umbria with 11.1%, then Bolzano Province with 11.7%. The German region of Trier ranks only fifth in the European Union, with 11.8% of the population facing the risk of poverty, followed by Trento with 12.1%, Marche with 13.6%, and Tuscany with 13.8%. In ninth place comes Upper Bavaria, where 14.3% of its population faces the risk of poverty, then Navarra in Spain with 14.5%, Upper Palatinate in Germany with 14.6%, Lombardy and Veneto with 14.8%, and Lower Bavaria with 14.9%. Upper Franconia 15.4%, Dresden 15.5%, Paes Vasco 15.7, Stuttgart 16.2, Piedmont 16.5.

After all, 54% of the Italian population (32 million including the population of Umbria) lives with a lower risk of poverty than in the more developed regions of Germany. Up to two-thirds of Italians, or 66%, live in 13 regions with the lowest poverty rates compared to the more developed regions of the large eurozone countries. It is also true that all regions of southern Italy, with the exception of Basilicata, are among the last 20 regions of the four countries analyzed (Italy, Germany, France and Spain) with the highest proportion of people at risk of poverty: from Abruzzo at 35.5% to Campania at 46.6%.