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From the early 1950s to the very beginning of 1970, pension systems in Italy began to grow rapidly. Their design was to deter poverty, especially among the elderly, and as a result three key legislative changes occurred: a minimum guaranteed pension level was enforced in 1952, pensions for disabilities were created in 1966, and lastly a means-tested social pension was enacted to subsidize the elderly over 65 that otherwise would have had to live in poverty. As result of this, these pension services became a huge expenditure of GDP as it increased from 5% in 1960 to 13.8% in 1990. Due to this, pension reform was enacted in 1992, also known as the Amato reform, which increased the age requirements, 65 for men and 60 for women, where one would be eligible to receive pensions designed for old-age citizens as well as slowly increasing the amount of years one would have to work to be able to qualify for these benefits.

The state of the Italian pension program seems to be in some trouble considering the issues Italy is facing such as low birth rates, high life expectancy, large levels of unemployment especially among the youth, and a pension system that seems to encourage early retirement which all contribute to the difficulty of funding a large welfare program. A unique issue the Italian pension system faces is the enactment of a seniority pension where public-sector workers and some industrial workers could retire before hitting the minimum age requirement if they provided 20 years to 35 years of work respectively resulting in prolonged payouts further depleting the system of funds. With this in mind, the 1992 Amato reform created further issues within the pension system as workers could still retire early based on if they had reached a certain amount of years working, in this case 35, but also making it increasingly more difficult to receive other benefits; therefore, incentivizing workers to retire earlier than they would have due to no new real gains for working over the specified amount. Even with further reforms beyond those of 1992, the pension program continues to expand as men in 2004 from the age range of 61 to 65 saw an average payout of 90.7% of their previous wages compared to an average of only 64.3% in 1987.

A built-in feature of the Italian pension system is that those who pay more into it throughout their career receive higher levels of compensation after retirement. This leads to a pension payout gender gap because Italian women typically work for less pay than their male counterparts and on average have shorter careers. The gap can be seen when considering that on average men receive 13,100 euros a month as a part of their average pension payout while women typically only see around 8900 euros. Furthermore, the gender gap has become more pronounced over the years as the average male pension rate has gone from 1.37 times that of a female worker in 1987 to about 1.47 times greater in 2004.