Does culture affect the well-being of communities?
This question is helped to answer by BES – Benessere equo e sostenibile (Equitable and Sustainable Well-being), a tool for measuring the well-being and progress of Italian society from a holistic and multidimensional perspective, which combines traditional economic indicators, such as GDP, with aspects concerning the cultural, social and environmental spheres.
Developed by the National Council of Economy and Labour (CNEL) and by the National Institute of Statistics (Istat) and introduced, starting from 2016, among the tools for planning, evaluation, monitoring of national economic policy, the BES includes over 150 indicators, grouped into 12 domains representative of the different dimensions of the individual, collective and environmental well-being.
The importance of culture in the BES is evidenced by the presence of a dedicated domain – Landscape and cultural heritage – and other indicators distributed in the domains Innovation, research and creativity and Education and training.
What is the trend of the BES indicators related to culture?
Between 2020 and 2023, with the gradual easing of the health emergency, the cultural participation of out-of-home citizens has returned to growth (from 29.8% to 35.2%), reaching levels slightly higher than in the pre-pandemic period (35.1% in 2019). The opposite trend for the reading rate of books and newspapers, which fell from 38.2% to 35.5% between 2020 and 2023, while the level of library use remained stable at 12.4% in 2023.
With regard to landscape and cultural heritage, in 2023, 12.3% of people aged 14 and over cite landscape deterioration as one of the five most worrying environmental issues. The same figure, in 2022, was 11.8%.
Finally, cultural and creative employment remained almost stable, rising from 3.4% to 3.5% of total employment between 2020 and 2023, slightly below the pre-pandemic value (3.6% in 2019).
Minicifre della cultura – The project
Minicifre della cultura is a project promoted by the Ministry Culture, realized by Direzione generale Educazione, ricerca e istituti culturali of MIC with the Fondazione Scuola dei beni e delle attività culturali. The research gathers and shares, in a paper pubblication and in aweb site, the principal statistical data on cultural sector in Italy: A tool for reading demand, supply and cultural policies, useful for the scientific community, political decision-makers, professionals and operators in the sector, and citizens. The project takes up the publication of the same name edited between 2009 and 2014 by the Studies Office of the General Secretariat of the Ministry and enriches it with content thanks to the contribution of the Directorates-General and Institutes of the Ministry of Culture but also of experts, public and private bodies in the sector, research institutions and newspapers.
Read more
Discover Minicifre della cultura project on the DGERIC page.
Go to the website minicifre.cultura.gov.it
