Abstract

This article presents the main features of the 2014 budget law concerning social policies. Three aspects have been considered: interventions aimed at slightly reforming the old age pension system (more radically reformed in 2011); the State financing of specific social assistance programmes (for the part of responsibility of the central government); and antipoverty measures and new programs protecting the most vulnerable population. Through this analysis the weak attention of Italian governments to social policy is shown. Budget choices are mainly shaped by an adaptive logic, by which continuity and inertia are dominant and only interstitial changes are introduced without an overall strategy, contributing paradoxically to a further fragmentation of social policy.