In Cagliari, nearly 1,600 minors (1,588 to be precise) live in urban areas of socioeconomic hardship . This data emerges from the research "The Places That Matter," published today by Save the Children.
Being born and raised in one neighborhood rather than another makes a difference: children and adolescents living in vulnerable areas are more exposed to the risk of poverty and school dropout and have fewer opportunities to access recreational services and green spaces . This impacts young people's future prospects.
In Cagliari, 9.3% of all 0-17 year olds living in the city live in an urban socioeconomically disadvantaged area (ADU). Vulnerable areas generally have more children, according to national data. This is not the case in Cagliari, where the percentage of minors (10.8%) is slightly lower than the municipal average (11.2%). Cagliari has five ADUs identified by Istat: Is Mirrionis, San Michele, Sant'Avendrace, and parts of the Stampace and Marina neighborhoods .
In these areas, 42.2% of families live in relative poverty (20.1% higher than the municipal average). Nearly one in five students (18.9%) has dropped out of school , almost double the municipal average of 9.7%. Furthermore, 21.9% of those in the final year of middle school are at risk of implicitly dropping out (11.8 percentage points higher than the municipal average of 10.1%); over a third of 15-29 year-olds (34.9%) are neither in education nor working, compared to the municipal average of 21.2% (+13.7 percentage points) .
In Italy, 142,000 children and adolescents live in the vulnerable suburbs of large cities : "They are often forced to confront serious socioeconomic and territorial inequalities. This is why we wanted to dedicate Impossible, the Biennial of Children's and Adolescents' Rights, to the theme of the suburbs," said Daniela Fatarella, Director General of Save the Children. "It is precisely from these places that we must begin to redefine political priorities, because a country in which the fate of a girl or boy depends on the neighborhood in which they are born is a country that fails to invest in its own future. Structural interventions capable of removing the obstacles that unfairly limit children's opportunities and combating educational poverty can no longer be postponed."
