Why talk about INPS today? ---- The presentation of the INPS 2025 Annual Report brings the future of the Italian social protection system back to the forefront of the debate. In presenting it, the Institute's president, Gabriele Fava, proposed the creation of a "Welfare Workshop": a permanent space for developing and discussing social policies for the coming years.
It's a proposal that deserves attention. The aging population, the declining birth rate, the transformations of the labor market, and profound economic and social changes raise questions that no protection system can avoid.But any reflection on the future should begin with an understanding of the present. Before discussing how the Italian welfare system should evolve, it's perhaps necessary to ask an even simpler question.
What is INPS really?
The most common answer seems almost obvious: it's the institution that pays pensions. An understandable answer, but a reductive one.
INPS is Italy's main social security institution, but limiting its role to pension payments ignores a key aspect of its function and history. Behind that definition lies a much broader system, built over more than a century, which supports the lives of workers before retirement: during illness, maternity leave, unemployment, corporate crises, and many other situations in which individual income declines or declines.
To understand the debate over the future of INPS, it's therefore necessary to take a step back. Before considering the Institute's reforms, we need to understand the nature of the social wealth it manages and the historical roots from which it originated.
Every month, millions of Italian workers pay contributions to INPS.
Most of them think that these contributions are primarily used to finance their future pension. In reality, only a portion of their contributions is earmarked for this purpose. The rest feeds a complex set of funds that intervene at very different stages of their working lives.
When a worker becomes ill and continues to receive income. When a worker takes maternity or paternity leave.
When a company experiences a crisis and resorts to layoffs. When a person loses their job and receives unemployment benefits. When an employer goes bankrupt and the Severance Pay Guarantee Fund steps in.
These are different benefits, governed by different regulations and funded through specific contributions. At first glance, they may appear to be independent tools, almost lacking a common thread. Yet they all respond to the same rationale: to protect people from events that could interrupt or reduce their earned income.
Pensions are certainly the most economically significant component of the system administered by INPS, but they do not exhaust its function. Alongside old age protection, there are insurance plans for illness, maternity, unemployment, suspension of work, and other social risks that have developed over the course of the country's industrial development.
When viewed as a whole, INPS appears less like a simple pension institution and more like the administrator of a complex social insurance system that supports workers throughout their entire lives.
Where does this system come from?
The mutualism of work
The social insurance system administered today by INPS did not originate with INPS.
Its roots lie in the experience of the labor movement and mutual aid societies, which arose to collectively address the risks that accompany the lives of working men and women.
Illness. Injury. Old age. Maternity. Job loss. Production crises.
Different events, but all sharing one thing: no one can predict if or when they will be struck. But everyone can contribute to ensuring those who face them aren't left alone.
This is the logic of mutualism: transforming an individual risk into a collective responsibility.
With the development of industrial society, however, voluntary forms of mutual aid alone were no longer sufficient. The expansion of wage labor, the growth of large industrial concentrations, and the emergence of new social risks necessitated the development of more stable instruments capable of ensuring comprehensive protection for the entire working community.
The state gradually intervened to recognize these forms of protection, make them mandatory, subject them to common rules, and assume their administration. The INPS became the primary body responsible for managing this system.
But managing does not mean creating.
Mutual capital does not originate from INPS or the state. It arises from the ability of the working world to organize collective forms of solidarity, which have been progressively recognized and institutionalized.
A wealth built by work
Every month, millions of workers allocate a portion of their wealth to mutual funds designed to finance collective benefits: pensions, sickness benefits, maternity and paternity leave, redundancy payments, unemployment benefits, the Severance Pay Guarantee Fund, and many other benefits.
Each contribution has a specific purpose. Taken together, however, these payments are based on a single principle: sharing the cost of risks that no individual could face alone.
In legal jargon, this is called mandatory contributions. From a social perspective, these contributions also represent a portion of the wealth produced by labor intended to build common rights and protections.
This is the mutualistic patrimony administered by INPS.
But what is its real size today?
How much is mutualistic assets worth today?
The mutualistic wealth built by dependent work can be measured.
The INPS 2025 Annual Report shows its size through the number of insured people, pensioners, benefits paid, companies involved, and financial resources managed.
The following data not only describes the activities of INPS. They measure the size of one of the largest collective assets built by labor in the history of the country.
There are 27 million workers insured with INPS, and 1.8 million businesses pay contributions annually. There are 15.7 million pensioners, while pension payments exceed 21 million, indicating that many people receive more than one benefit. Added to these are 30.1 million medical certificates of illness, 2.8 million NASPI beneficiaries, and 10 million children receiving the Single and Universal Allowance.
These numbers are difficult to reconcile with the traditional image of INPS as a simple pension institution. They describe a system that accompanies millions of people throughout their lives: when they enter the workforce, when they fall ill, when a child is born, when they lose their job, and when they reach retirement.
The economic dimensions also confirm this reality. In 2024, INPS managed EUR471 billion in current revenue, EUR284 billion of which came from contributions, and disbursed EUR460 billion, EUR417 billion of which was allocated to institutional benefits.
These figures reveal something beyond the budget of a public institution. They reveal the economic dimension of organized solidarity. Every year, a portion of the wealth produced by labor is collected and redistributed to ensure social security for millions of people.
These are the figures that today give substance to the mutualistic assets administered by INPS.
Conclusions
The INPS 2025 Annual Report invites reflection on the future of Italian welfare. This is a necessary reflection: an aging population, declining birth rates, and a changing labor market are challenges no social protection system can escape.
But any reform should begin with an understanding of what INPS administers. Behind pensions, benefits, and social safety nets lies more than just the work of a public institution. It's a collective heritage built over more than a century through the work and contributions of millions of people.
Discussing the future of INPS means, first and foremost, discussing the future of this mutualistic heritage: how to preserve it, strengthen it, and adapt it to societal changes, without losing sight of its founding principles.
Because mutualism isn't a thing of the past. It's the idea, still relevant today, that life's great risks shouldn't fall exclusively on the individual, but can be faced collectively through solidarity.
Perhaps it is from here, and not from an abstract discussion of the future, that the "Welfare Workshop" proposed by President Fava should begin: from a concrete awareness of what the system already manages.
Before discussing the future of INPS, we should therefore consider the future of the mutualistic assets it manages. This is perhaps the most important reflection offered by the 2025 INPS Annual Report .
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Source: A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
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