Immigrant groups’ income inequality within and across Italian regions

Abstract

The relationship between Italian regional income inequality and the phenomenon of migration is still under current debate. Policymakers and researchers worry about the process of assimilation of the new entrants, in a country where regional disparities are strong. We provide evidence that regional income disparities apply to groups of immigrants as well as of nationals, but the most important source of inequality rests on within-immigrant group/within-region, especially for those households with the presence of women and very young children. However, if bottom incomes were to grow, inequality would not diminish, with the exception of married individuals living in the North, for no other characteristic is correlated to inequality according to the Atkinson bottom sensitive index. We show that the uneven economic development across regions then influences the distribution of immigration both in sociodemographic and economic terms.