Abstract

Welfare system studies have been focused mainly on analysis at a national level. Recently, researchers have started to analyse the welfare system at local levels and this new research path has generated many different classifications of welfare systems at regional levels within the Italian context. Six classifications of regional welfare systems are analysed here with the aim of identifying their strengths and weaknesses. All classifications show not only a different performance between North and South regional welfare systems, but they also indicate the necessity to develop new variables and to carry out deeper analyses in order to understand the difference between regional welfare systems and what generates different regional welfare models. These issues have to be dealt with if we want to guarantee the same welfare to people who are living in the same country.