The Rebirth Plan for Sardinia and Its Side-Effects on Mortality: An Ecological Study

Vanesa Santos Sanchez, Università degli Studi di Sassari
Gabriele Ruiu, Università degli Studi di Sassari
Marco Breschi, Università degli Studi di Sassari
Massimo Esposito, Università degli Studi di Sassari
Lucia Pozzi, Università degli Studi di Sassari

Since Italian unification, Sardinia has been one of the most economically backward regions in the Peninsula. In the aftermath of the World War II, the Italian Government decided to launch an ambitious program of public incentives to favour the industrialization of Southern Italy with the creation of Cassa per il Mezzogiorno (Fund for Southern Italy), a financial institution aimed at financing the improvement of infrastructures and sustaining industrial activity by furnishing cheap credit. Sardinia was obviously identified as an objective for the program. This led in 1962 to the so called Piano di rinascita (plan for the Rebirth of Sardinia) which in contrast to the Cassa’s policy of favouring the modernization of the agrarian activity and infrastructural investments, was mainly focused in promoting the localization of heavy industry in the island. Given the poor environmental awareness of the epoch, the industrial plants financed by the Rebirth Plan were generally highly pollutant. The aim of this paper is to investigate the long-term consequences on mortality of the Sardinian plan of rebirth by the means of a spatial analysis carried out at the municipal level both on the eve of the industrialization process (from 1951 to 1961) and after 20 years, 30 years, 40 years and 50 years from the beginning of the plan.

See extended abstract

 Presented in Session 240. Hazards, Risks and Disasters