Istat’s 2026 well-being report finds mixed movement across indicators

Italy’s National Institute of Statistics, Istat, released the 2026 edition of its Equitable and Sustainable Well-being report, known as BES, on October 26. The report brings together 148 indicators across 12 domains, tracking well-being through a wider lens than output or income alone. Istat says 91 indicators were updated to 2025 or 2026, 34 to 2024, and 23 refer to earlier periods. The edition year therefore identifies when the report was published; it does not mean that every indicator uses data from the same year.

The report’s year-on-year overview finds improvement in 54 of 132 comparable indicators, stability in 55 and deterioration in 23. The distribution describes a country whose well-being measures did not all move in one direction. It is also a count of indicators, not a weighting by population, economic value or effect on quality of life. An improvement in one indicator may affect more people than a change in another, but the count does not assign different weights to reflect that difference.

A longer-term comparison offers another perspective. In its analysis beginning in 2014, the report finds improvement in 70 of 133 comparable indicators, deterioration in 24 and no clear or sufficiently determinate trend in 39. These figures do not have exactly the same coverage as the annual comparison: the number of indicators differs and the time horizon is longer. Combining the annual 54-55-23 distribution with the long-term 70-24-39 tally to create a single well-being score would not be methodologically meaningful.

The BES framework considers well-being through indicators in health, education, work and work-life balance, economic conditions, social relationships, safety, environment, services and other social domains. Measures can draw on administrative records, sample surveys and statistics from different institutions, so their collection cycles and reference periods vary. Updating some values to 2025 or 2026 improves timeliness, while older observations for some structural measures limit direct comparison. Readers need to interpret each figure using its own reference period and definition in the report.

The European Union comparison expands the report’s economic and social picture. Istat says that among 40 comparable indicators, Italy performs more favorably on 12 and less favorably on 18. Digital skills are reported at 54.3% in Italy and 60.4% in the EU-27. The share of young people not in employment, education or training (NEET) is 13.3% in Italy and 11% in the EU-27. These rates show comparative gaps in skills and young people’s connection to work or education; by themselves, they do not explain the causes or the circumstances of individuals in the labor market.

The labor-force participation gap also brings a gender dimension into view. The report gives an overall gender gap of 8.5 percentage points, with 13.3 points for women and 3.8 for men. These measures show why economic capacity cannot be reduced to output or a headline unemployment total. Participation differences can be considered alongside job quality, unpaid care, regional opportunity and working hours. The report’s summary does not attribute the gap to any one factor, however; identifying causes requires separate analysis.

Education and research measures provide further context for productivity. Italy’s share of adults with at least an upper-secondary diploma is 14.2 percentage points below the EU average, while the share of university graduates is 13.7 points lower. Research and development spending equals 1.40% of gross domestic product in Italy, compared with 2.26% in the EU-27. These indicators show comparative differences in human capital and innovation capacity, but do not measure their short-term effect on growth or productivity. The composition of investment, its sectoral distribution and research outcomes require additional analysis.

Economic vulnerability indicators also make risks visible that averages can conceal. The risk of poverty or social exclusion in Italy is reported as 2.3 percentage points higher than in the EU-27. At the same time, life expectancy is 2.2 years longer than the EU average, and avoidable mortality is 16.0 per 10,000 people in Italy compared with 23.8 in the EU-27. These measures concern different domains and definitions. A more favorable health result does not remove disadvantages in income or work, and a poverty-risk measure alone does not describe the circumstances of every household.

Istat’s regional summary describes the North-South divide through the relative position of a majority of indicators. In every northern and central region except Lazio, at least half of the BES measures available at regional level stand above the Italian average. In the South, a majority fall below the national average, with Abruzzo as the exception. This does not mean that every domain moves in the same direction in each region; the exceptions are part of the report’s findings.

The regional divide is especially evident across three domains: work and work-life balance, economic well-being and social relationships. Istat says Abruzzo and Sardinia often record results near the national average within the South. In research, innovation and creativity, by contrast, some northern and central areas, including Valle d’Aosta and Liguria, show weaknesses on certain indicators. These examples show why a region’s position above or below the national average does not describe every locality within a broad geographic bloc.

Safety, subjective well-being and the environment show a more varied map. In safety, southern regions other than Campania record better results than the national average. Large metropolitan areas in the Centre-North are more adversely affected by the incidence of predatory crime and violence, with Lazio most affected, followed by Lombardy, Emilia-Romagna and Tuscany. This is a concrete example of why well-being cannot be reduced to one North-South gradient: the regional pattern for work and income does not automatically recur in public safety.

The 2026 edition also selects one indicator from each BES domain to examine how some dimensions of well-being have evolved from the postwar period to the present. Where possible, Istat adds gender and regional differences to this long-run reading. This historical section is not the same time series as the 2014-2025 analysis of recent trends; it uses selected measures to place social change in a wider context. In assessing current economic and social conditions, recent movement needs to be distinguished from developments over the decades since the war.

The report’s online statistical appendix and dashboard provide regional and demographic detail beyond the press summary. Istat says indicators are disaggregated where possible by region, sex, age group and education level, with some breakdowns available in combination. This allows readers to investigate which groups or domains lie behind a national percentage instead of treating the average as the complete picture. Used alongside each measure’s definition and reference period, the appendix and dashboard make the report’s economic and social analysis more specific.