Abstract

The paper presents the results of a case study on the balance between social policies and child educational poverty in a context marked by depopulation in Sardinia, with the aim to stress one of the most important factors of demographic desertification, the denatality associated with the structural deficiencies of work/life balance policies (and other forms of service poverty). Educational poverty is framed here in the study of the «Alta Marmilla» case, a pilot area for the experimentation of the National Strategy for Internal Areas. Launched in 2015, this experimentation saw the education sector among the priorities for intervention. The main considerations on the territorial context examined, using official documents and other secondary data relating to demographic trends and education, highlight the difficulty of guaranteeing conciliation responses. The balance between work and life then has consequences on educational poverty, which is therefore a mirror of the delicate skin of the territory in which it occurs. At the same time it emerges that, precisely in the so-called fragility of the context, the SNAI strategy can favor participation and thus intercept the needs of working women with minor children, thus creating an important prerequisite for tracing forms of co-planning and promoting strategies for gender sensitive policies.