Italian social policies are divided between insurance and public assistance, an ambivalence that occasionally results in unequal treatment of equals and discriminatory distribution of benefits. Though expansion of social expenditures slowed after 1975, social programmes did not suffer real cuts until 1983. The effect of social policies on poverty is not direct: most recent changes in the income distribution reflect the effects of recession. Though the Italian share of GDP officially allocated to social expenditures is still below the average of that in other industrialized countries, resources available to the needy are understated because of informal channels within the institutional system. Although the data on income distribution are inadequate, improvements can be discerned in the lowest decile owing to transfer policies targeted on families during the 1970s. In general, the equalizing policies championed by the unions in the 1970s have improved the well-being of wage earners and salaried workers, as well as pensioners.

During the past four years, French economic and social policy appears to have differed both from the policies followed previously in France and from those of the other industrialized countries. The difference can be judged from the goals pursued, the means used and the results obtained. One of the goals of the socialist government elected in May 1981 was to reduce income and wealth inequalities and to improve the well-being of the poor through an active social and tax policy. This goal was also a means, since these measures — along with an expansionary fiscal policy — were supposed to precipitate economic recovery and to reduce unemployment by stimulating consumption expenditures. Actual developments, however, led to quite a radical change in French macro-economic policy. The fight against inflation and the reduction of internal and external deficits since June 1982 and the search for industrial investment and competitiveness since 1983 have reoriented both social and tax policies.