The Italian economy is deeply suffering from the economic crisis despite the relatively strong banking system. Although in recent years Italy faced a low, but always positive, GDP growth, in the third quarter of 2008 the situation has worsened. The GDP has declined steadily since then and the Italian National Institute of Statistics (ISTAT) prevision for the second quarter of 2009 is a fall by 6% over the same period of 2008. Simultaneously, demand has decline by 4.4% exports by 20.9%, imports by 17% and investments by 12.7%.  

The crisis has severely affected the Italian economy in several aspects, especially with regard to employment. The redundancy payments have increase in the first part of 2009 by 282.3% compared to the same period in 2008.

The Italian government has launched the first stimulus package in January 2009 which was followed by a second set of measures in July. The measures to address the economic crisis aim mainly to support industrial sector and companies promote the labor market and the investments and maintain family’s purchasing power.  

• The impact of the crisis
• Challenges to social security systems
• Crisis response
• Social Security responses
• Conclusions