Who's Holding Italy Back?

Populist politicians indulging pensioners are ruining the country for the young.

- Peter Coy & Alessandra Migliaccio

At just 31 years old, Luigi Di Maio, head of Italy’s populist Five Star Movement, is no one’s image of a gerontocrat. Yet since helping form a new coalition government, Di Maio has given priority to rolling back a gradual increase in Italy’s retirement age— even though doing so would help older Italians while adding to the debt burden on his own generation.

Dismantling a money-saving 2011 pension measure is one of a handful of issues on which Di Maio sees eye to eye with his coalition partner, Matteo Salvini, 45, of the right-wing, anti- immigrant League party. Asked earlier this year about former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s goal of preserving the “good parts” of the 2011 measure, Salvini said, “It’s no problem, because there are no good parts in it.”

It’s not easy to be young in Italy, even apart from the pension burden. The country’s economic output is smaller now than it was in 2004, and employment policies are skewed to protecting jobs, not creating them. The number of Italians registered as living abroad rose 60 percent from 2006 to 2017, to almost 5 million. Among those who stay, it’s common for unemployed young people to live with their parents instead of starting their own families, which is one reason the country has one of the world’s lowest birthrates.

It’s understandable that after years of stagnation, Italian voters were eager for a change in government. But for a country that needs optimism and entrepreneurial vigor, the new leadership has a backward- looking agenda. The League wants tax cuts and tight restrictions on immigration. Five Star wants a guaranteed minimum income for all. Both say they want to stay in the European Union—but threaten to defy its rules on migration and debt.