Santé

One in seven working age adults identifies as having a disability in OECD countries. Many of them are excluded from meaningful work and have low levels of income and social engagement. Governments can help create an environment that supports social and labour market integration for people with disability. This report reviews the effectiveness of the social protection system for people with disability in Italy and summarises the results of a pilot carried out in four regions testing an alternative disability assessment. The current assessment process can sometimes deny services to people in need of support while being generous to people with significant health problems but who are not experiencing severe disability. A disability assessment that takes medical and functional aspects into account helps to direct services and resources to those most in need and to harmonise access to disability support across the country. Implementing disability reform has proved to be difficult in Italy in the past decade. This report provides evidence that reform can improve outcomes for people with disability.

This profile identifies strengths, challenges and specific areas of action on cancer prevention and care in Italy as part of the European Cancer Inequalities Registry, a flagship initiative of Europe’s Beating Cancer Plan. It provides a short synthesis of: the national cancer burden; risk factors for cancer (focusing on behavioural and environmental risk factors); early detection programmes; and cancer care performance (focusing on accessibility, care quality, costs and the impact of COVID-19 on cancer care).

Being able to swim empowers individuals to make choices, have agency, and be free to choose core aspects of their life, such as working safely on or near water. It is also associated with lifelong health benefits and reduces the risk of drowning. Using data from the Lloyd’s Register Foundation World Risk Poll 2019, this paper provides the first global estimates of adults’ ability to swim without assistance. Individuals in high-income countries are considerably more likely to report being able to swim without assistance than individuals in low-income countries. Disparities also exist within countries. In particular, women are less likely to be able to swim without assistance than men in virtually all countries, birth cohorts, and levels of education. Investing in reducing inequalities in life skills, such as swimming, can foster economic development and empowerment, especially in light of threats, such as climate change.

The present paper presents methodologies to forecast and conduct policy analysis for three well-being indicators with the goal of informing the Italian government’s budget planning process. For each of the three indicators (healthy life expectancy, overweight and obesity, and early school leaving), a model is developed that allows projecting future trends under a status quo scenario and that allows estimating the impact of policy and budget levers on future outcomes. The micro-economic models for being in good health have a moderate explanatory power with an R2 ranging between 0.2 and 0.3. The strongest predictors of good health are by far the prevalence of chronic diseases, followed by low mental health, sport practice and diet. Overall, the combined changes in inputs yield an improvement in the share of people declaring being in good health by 2.7 ppt, from a baseline of 62% among people older than 18. The micro-economic model for being in excess weight has lower explanatory power (R2 between 0.05 and 0.15). As a result, the combined changes in inputs yield a relatively small decrease by 0.5 ppt starting from a baseline of 47.6% of the population. The most important predictors are those associated with a healthy diet. Finally, the cross-region macro-economic model of early school leaving has high explanatory power (R2 above 0.90) and highlights a wide range of ‘push and pull’ factors. The combination of benchmark inputs yields a decrease in the rate of early leavers by 1.8 ppt, starting from a baseline of 13.1%. Overall, these results highlight the large scope for policy intervention to improve well-being outcomes, as well as the multiplicity of policy levers.

This profile provides a concise and policy-relevant overview of health and the health system in Italy as part of the broader series of the State of Health in the EU country profiles. It provides a short synthesis of: the health status in the country; the determinants of health, focussing on behavioural risk factors; the organisation of the health system; and the effectiveness, accessibility and resilience of the health system. This edition has a special focus on the impact of COVID‑19. This profile is the joint work of the OECD and the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, in co-operation with the European Commission.

This report offers an initial overview of the available information regarding the circumstances, nature and outcomes of the education of schoolchildren during the first wave of COVID-19 lockdowns of March-April 2020. Its purpose is primarily descriptive: it presents information from high quality quantitative studies on the experience of learning during this period in order to ground the examination and discussion of these issues in empirical examples. Information is presented on three interrelated topics: the nature of the educational experience during the period of lockdowns and school closures; the home environment in which education took place for the vast majority of schoolchildren; the effects on the mental health and learning outcomes for children during this period. The data come primarily from 5 countries (France, Germany, Ireland, the United Kingdom and the United States) with additional information on some aspects for 6 additional countries (Australia, Belgium (Flanders), Canada, Finland, Italy and the Netherlands). This report will be of interest to policy makers, academics, education stakeholders and anyone interested in a first international empirical analysis of the effects of the pandemic on the lives and education of schoolchildren.

This profile provides a concise and policy-relevant overview of health and the health system in Italy as part of the broader series of the State of Health in the EU country profiles. It provides a short synthesis of: the health status in the country; the determinants of health, focussing on behavioural risk factors; the organisation of the health system; and the effectiveness, accessibility and resilience of the health system. This profile is the joint work of the OECD and the European Observatory on Health Systems and Policies, in co-operation with the European Commission.