Quality of life: Trento the best in Italy

Trento queen of Italy for the quality of life in 2019. The autonomous province, excellence for business and work, the environment, education and training, leisure and tourism, stands out in the annual ranking of ItaliaOggi and La Sapienza University of Rome, in collaboration with Cattolica Assicurazioni, now in its twenty-first edition. A record, that of Trento, which follows a success that has been consolidated over the years. At the antipodes, Agrigento: paradigmatic case of southern realities with unsolved atavistic structural problems, figure in the last place of the ranking, this year relative to 107 provinces, not more than 110 (the Sardinian ones have been reduced from eight to five). Agrigento was found to be almost deficient in all aspects and dimensions of the quality of life (from business and work to living standards) except for the demographic dimension and for security.

In 2019 the quality of life in Italy has improved overall. Today there are 65 out of 107 Italian provinces where the quality of life is good or acceptable: a figure that is the best of the last five years. In 2015, in fact, the provinces in which "one lives well" had 53 out of 110, in 2016 and 2017 had become 56 out of 110, in 2018 they had reached 59 out of 110. A constant evolution, in short, despite the economic context simple.

This year, the ItaliaOggi-La Sapienza University of Rome survey has reworked the look, to keep pace with economic and social changes and to identify new interpretations of the quality of life, not only in terms of North-American opposition South, but also of "transversal" analysis of the phenomena that affect the large and small Italian provinces, very different from each other. In the 2019 edition, more detailed statistical information on the standard of living has been included; the dimension of financial and educational services has been replaced by that of "education, training and human capital"; new analysis "clusters" have been identified that have given rise to five groups of homogeneous provinces in which it is possible to find similar characteristics. Not an Italy, therefore, nor even two, but five.

Returning to the ranking, the top ten provinces once again belong to the Northeast or Northwest: after Trento, there are Pordenone, Sondrio, Verbano-Cusio-Ossola, Belluno, Aosta, Treviso, Cuneo, Udine and Bolzano, which descends from first in tenth place compared to 2018.

To meet the first provinces of the South it is necessary to run through the rankings up to the 69th and 70th place, where the Lucanians Potenza and Matera appear.

In the South and Islands, "good living" is still a mirage: in 35 provinces out of 38 the quality of life was poor or insufficient (in the remaining three it is acceptable). Which means, in terms of population, that 44% of Italians live with an unsatisfactory quality of life.

On the contrary, in the Northeast, in 22 provinces out of 22 the quality of life is good or acceptable, in none poor or insufficient. In the Northwest, the quality is good or acceptable in 23 out of 25 provinces (only two poor).

In Central Italy there is a stable situation: in 14 out of 22 the quality of life in 2019 is acceptable.

Even in this survey, one thing is clear: in the small and medium-sized provinces we live better than in the metropolis. The large urban centers struggle to touch the summit and maintain positions of excellence.

However, the performances of some major cities in 2019 improve: Rome rises from 85th to 76th place; Milan from 55th to 29th, Turin from 78th to 49th; Bologna from the 43rd to the 13th. As for Naples, the jump is from 108th to 104th place: considering however that the number of analyzed provinces has been reduced from 110 to 107, it is a confirmation. The Neapolitan province remains third last, followed only by Crotone and Agrigento.