Studying Income Inequality of Immigrant Communities in Italy

This article deals with the issue of economic integration of immigrants in Italy. Ethnic inequality and economic stratification are analysed based both on the European Survey on Income and Living Conditions (EU-SILC) and the ad-hoc survey on households with foreign people conducted by the National Institute of Statistics in 2009. With reference to the native group and the groups identified by the largest ethnic communities living in Italy, through the Analysis of Gini decomposition technique, the article highlights that the between-group inequality accounts for a barely four percent of the overall inequality, the largest share being due to the inequalities within the groups. The policy prescription suggested is the adoption of ‘‘peculiar’’ policies on specific subgroups of immigrants aimed at reducing the disparities within the subgroups.