Italy/ 6.2 Public cultural expenditure  

6.2.1 Aggregated indicators

Compared with the strong boost to overall public cultural expenditure in the past two decades – it doubled in the 1990s, after having more than doubled in the 1980s in nominal terms: see Rapporti sull' Economia della Cultura, op.cit. (even if data from different sources are not exactly comparable) – there has been a very substantial downturn in cultural funding in the 2000s.

According to Istat, the total amount of public cultural expenditure in 2010 – final expenditure, by all levels of government and all ministries and administrative units – amounted to 6 910 million EUR. Compared with the 5 945 million spent in 2000, inflation not taken into account, the increase was only +16%.

Expenditure per capita amounted to 117 EUR, with a slight nominal growth compared with the 101 EUR of 2000, whereas the ratio on GDP (0.44% in 2010, versus 0.49% in 2000), as well as the ratio on public expenditure, an indicator of the government's willingness to pay for culture (0.9% in 2010 versus 1.1% in 2000), have both been declining.

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