The socio-institutional divide. Explaining Italy’s regional inequality over the long run

In recent years there have been major advances in the research about the historical pattern of
regional inequality in Italy and its historical roots: new and more accurate estimates of regional
GDP, as well as of social indicators (human capital, life expectancy, HDI, heights, inequality,
social capital) and other indices (market potential), running roughly from around the Unification
to our days, are now available. By the light of this up-to-date information, the article reviews the
debate about the determinants of regional development in Italy, within the broader framework of
the country’s industrial take-off and modern economic growth, and connects it to the main
strands of the international literature. After critically discussing the competing hypotheses
proposed to account for the different patterns observed and the North-South divide, a different
explanation – and the main argument of the article – is presented: a North-South socioinstitutional
divide pre-existed Unification, in some respects grew stronger with it and was never
bridged throughout the history of post-Unification Italy; such a divide ultimately impacted on the
levels of human and social capital, as well as upon differences in policies and institutional
performance, and thus on economic growth.