»Title of chapter The Economics of Rising Inequalities »Author A. Brandolini, P. Cipollone, P. Sestito »Pages 225-264 »Title of Book The Economics of Rising Inequalities »Editors D. Cohen, T. Piketty, G. Saint-Paul »Publisher Oxford University Press »Web site [ see here ] »ISBN 0-19-925402-8, 2002 »Abstract The chapter presents estimates on the dispersion of earnings and the proportion of low-paid employees in Italy in the period 1977-1998, and it measures the differential impact of low pays and the employment status on households’ poverty. The estimates are computed from the micro-data of the Historical Archive of the Bank of Italy’s Survey of Household Income and Wealth. The distribution of net earnings narrowed from the late 1970s until the end of the 1980s, abruptly widened in the early 1990s and experienced little modification in the remaining of the decade. The diffusion of the share of low pays evolved in parallel with that of earnings inequality. Finally, the amount of employment in the household, particularly of members other than the head, matters more than low pay in influencing the probability of the household to be in poverty.