WP 2022-05.
Executive Summary
Italy is a country marked by strong social and economic inequality among its regions. This inequality not only has deep secular roots, but seems to insistently resist the decades of public policies of redistribution and stimulation carried out by the Italian state. Nevertheless, what we notice is that, at a certain moment, a cultural and psychological structure was created that decisively influenced the effective social and economic progress of the two different parts of Italy, so that, even with the Italian unification and the successive and intense redistribution policies, regional differences did not suffer any significant reduction. In this context, the present paper aims to analyse the contribution of the cultural factor, that is, the individual mentality in the achievement of wealth – and to demonstrate how, most of the time, there lie the true roots that lead to development. Using a questionnaire, we were able to measure these cultural factor values along three main axes: individualism-collectivism, Locus of Control and economic left-right; and we found different correlations with political self-identification and (macro)region of residence.
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The Roots of Wealth Are in the Psychology of the Individuals
