>>>ANSA/ One in 10 Italians lives in absolute poverty

(ANSA) - Rome, July 14 - In 2013, almost one in 10 Italians lived in absolute poverty, meaning they could not afford enough goods and services to live a dignified life, national statistics bureau Istat said Monday.
    This is a record high since the agency began keeping track of poverty levels in 2005, three years before Italy plunged into what is its longest postwar recession.
    The number of absolute poor was 6,020,000, or 9.9% of the total population in 2013, up from 2,382,00 and 4.1% in 2005, Istat said in its Poverty in Italy report.
    While the rate of relative household poverty was stable between 2012 (12.7%) and 2013 (12.6%), the rate of absolute poverty increased especially in the south, where the number of the absolute poor rose from 2,347,000 in 2012 to 3,072,000 in 2013, Istat said. Absolute household poverty increased from 6.8% to 7.9% in 2013 over the previous year, with those figures spiking in the south, jumping from 9.8% to 12.6% in the same period.
    Absolute poverty rose among families with more than three people and those with children (from 8.9% in 2012 to 12.2% in 2013).
    Additionally, minors living in absolute poverty rose from 1.58 million or 10.3% in 2012 to 1.434 million and 13.8% in 2013.
    The elderly were also hard hit last year, with 888,000 or 7% of the total population living in absolute poverty, up from 5.8% in 2012. Another 6.4% of families in Italy is teetering on the brink of poverty, Istat data showed. Also on Monday, Coldiretti farmers' association said the number of Italians living in extreme poverty more than doubled since the economic crisis began in 2007, and children were the hardest hit.
    The extremely poor were 2.4 million in 2007, and rose by 150% to 6.2 million last year.
    "In 2013, almost half a million, or 428.587 children under five needed food aid, up 13% over the previous year," Coldiretti said.
    Of these indigent children under five years old, 149,002 or 35% live in Italy's impoverished southern regions and 129,240 or 30% live in the wealthier more industrialized north. More than 40% of all indigent children live in the Campania and Sicily regions, according to Coldiretti.