(ANSA) - ROME, JUL 3 - The COVID emergency has exacerbated existing inequalities in Italian life, ISTAT said in its annual report Friday. The epidemic has hit the more fragile elements of society harder than others, "sharpening at the same time the significant inequalities that afflict our country," the statistics agency said. Proof of this, ISTAT said, were the "social differentials detected in the excess mortality caused by COVID-19". On the jobs market, women and young people have been harder hit by the virus emergency, ISTAT said, since they are more prevalent in the service sector. In other findings, the statistics agency said that fear of the virus may have led to 10,000 fewer births, belying predictions of a baby boom due to the lockdown. Some 12% of businesses are thinking of cutting jobs, ISTAT said. Furthermore, it said, some 7.9 million people in employment did not work in April. As well as widening the gap between the better and worse off, the virus has also deepened the north-south gulf, ISTAT said. (ANSA).
