A total of 4.6 million people - 7.6 percent of the population - were living in absolute poverty in Italy last year, Italy's central statistics agency Istat said on Tuesday.
The number of people living in absolute poverty rose more than two- and-a half-times from 2006 when it stood at 1.8 million, Istat noted.
But the number of children in absolute poverty more than tripled since from 2006 to reach 1.1 million in 2015, Istat said in a report presented to the Senate upper house of parliament..
Welfare spending in Italy reached 446.8 billion euros in 2015, of which over four-fifths went on the poorest sections of the population, according to the Istat report.
Italy is still struggling to recover from its worst recession in the postwar period.
