Italy poorer and gloomier, Eurispes says

(ANSA) - Rome, January 30 - A downcast Italy with less to spend and a pessimistic outlook for the future, such that nearly half of Italians now say they want to leave the country, shed a gloomy light on the sunny Mediterranean country on Friday, in an annual report by polling agency Eurispes.
    Nearly one of every two Italians, or 45%, would like to leave the country and live abroad, the Eurispes poll said.
    Eurispes said this marked an increase of 8% from 2006, two years before the global economic crisis.
    The poll also found that almost half of Italians, 47%, say they can't make it financially to the end of the month.
    This was 16.4% up on last year, Eurispes said.
    As well, four out of 10 Italians think the Italian economy would do better outside the eurozone.
    The percentage of Italians wanting out of the euro rose from 26% at the start of 2014 to 40% now, said Eurispes.
    More than half the Euroskeptics think the single currency is the chief cause of Italy's economic woes, it added.
    The poll also showed that nearly half of Italians are paying medical bills on installment plans, part of a growing trend for all kinds of spending.
    The 46.7% of those surveyed who reported paying medical bills gradually has jumped by 24.3% from 2013, the pollster said. As well, 62.4% said they were paying for their cars on installments, 60.4% used such plans for appliances, and just over 50% bought computers and mobile phones by installment.
    In fact, for 71.5% of Italians, purchasing power has declined, and just over one out of every two Italians, 57%, say they can't manage to pay for large expenses.
    Italy's notoriously slow justice system also saw a decline in its already-low popularity, where only 28.8% of respondents said that they trust the judicial system.
    That figure represents a 12.6% drop from one year ago, when the level was at 41.4%, a decrease that Eurispes called "worrisome and unexpected".
    The low approval rating for the magistrate is even more marked when considered in light of the fact that the percentage of Italians who say they don't trust the judicial system increased over the same period of time, rising from last year's 54.8% to 68.6% in this poll.
    One area that saw exponential positive growth, however, was Pope Francis's popularity, which reached an approval rating of 89.6%, according to the poll.
    This favorable rating helped approval for the Catholic Church to soar to a never-before-seen high of 62.6%.