The costs of insularity. The case of Elba Island

This work was commissioned to IRPET by the Regional Council of Tuscany.
The report was written by Sabrina Iommi, with statistical support from Donatella Marinari, and relates to the Local Systems, Culture, and Tourism Area, coordinated by Sabrina Iommi.

This paper proposes an analysis of the socio-economic characteristics of the island of Elba in the context of the recent debate on the social and economic costs structurally linked to insularity. In this context, smaller islands emerge as particularly vulnerable places, because they combine difficult territorial accessibility with very small local markets (job opportunities, services, etc.). Not infrequently, their economies are highly specialized in seaside tourism, with the positive and negative repercussions that this entails. The former obviously include job opportunities and income, while the latter include low job quality, consisting mainly of low-skilled and low-paid seasonal jobs, and the high cost of living, especially in terms of difficult economic access to housing. Sometimes these contexts are also characterized by a high degree of fragmentation among municipal administrations, which generates additional costs for residents and businesses, multiplying the fixed operating costs of local authorities and preventing the design of more uniform and effective local policies.

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