Italian economic development in the postwar era has been proverbial, excelled only by that of Germany and Japan. In 1945 Italy was one of the poorest countries in the West. A land bereft of natural resources and with only a quarter of its soil suitable for farming, the country had suffered more from the war than any other Western nation but Germany. At the end of hostilities, destitution was widespread, with the population suffering the classic earmarks of poverty: high illiteracy and infant mortality, poor diet, and limited education. Most housing lacked baths and much of it even running water. Unemployment and underemployment were high; inflation was rampant and taxation regressive. A late industrial developer, Italy had only a modest manufacturing sector, which was centered in a narrow area of the Northwest and depended heavily on tariffs and state assistance. Merely a third of the labor force was employed in industry; more than half was engaged in small-scale agriculture. Per capita income was lower than at any time since unification and half what it had been in 1938.

By 1970 Italy had become the world's seventh-ranking industrial state, was a leading international exporter, and held some of the most substantial gold and foreign-exchange reserves in Europe. During the intervening period the country's gross national product had increased by 568 percent while per capita income had risen, at constant prices, by 464 percent – which worked out to an increase well exceeding that of the entire preceding hundred years.