The 2026 Bes Report captures an Italy that is improving but remains divided

Istat published on October 26, 2026 the thirteenth edition of the Report on Equitable and Sustainable Well-Being, the tool with which the institute measures quality of life in Italy every year through 148 indicators distributed across 12 different areas, from employment to health, from education to the environment.

A comparison with the previous year is possible for 132 of the 148 overall indicators: among these, 54 show an improvement, 55 remain stable and 23 worsen. It is a balance that the institute presents as slightly positive overall, but one that conceals, behind the aggregate figure, territorial differences that the report itself highlights.

Two figures in particular convey the scale of the imbalance between areas of the country. Italy’s employment rate remains 8.5 percentage points below the European average, with a gap that widens further when looking at the female component: -13.3 points compared with the EU average for women, against -3.8 points for men. In the South, the report states, only four women out of ten between the ages of 20 and 64 are employed.

On the healthcare front, almost one person in ten reports having foregone a medical service they needed, a figure that the report places alongside the territorial inequalities already described for the labour market.

The limit that Istat itself places on the reading of this data concerns precisely comparability: out of 148 overall indicators, only 132 are actually comparable with the previous year’s survey, which means that for part of the picture — sixteen indicators — it is not possible, in this edition, to establish whether the situation has improved or worsened compared with 2025. The Bes Report nevertheless remains, in terms of frequency and scope, the tool with which Istat tracks the evolution of well-being in the country over time, domain by domain, from one edition to the next.