Shifting priorities: The evolution of household saving motives in Italy

Household saving behaviour plays a crucial role in economic stability, affecting both personal financial security and macroeconomic dynamics. This paper investigates the evolution of saving motives in Italy using six waves of the Italian Survey of Household Income and Wealth (SHIW) spanning 2012 to 2022, documenting a pronounced structural shift away from bequest-oriented and intergenerational saving toward precautionary and retirement-motivated accumulation during 2020–2022. The decline in bequest motives appears to pre-date the pandemic and to be transversal across all age cohorts, inconsistent with a demographic-ageing explanation and consistent with, though not conclusive evidence of, an exogenous-shock interpretation. A multinomial logistic regression model – extended with controls for perceived income shock, income expectations, financial risk attitude, and family structure – reveals that structural economic channels and individual financial planning orientations jointly explain saving motive heterogeneity. Supplementary individual-level analyses confirm that 63.3% of panel households shifted their primary saving motive between 2020 and 2022, with bequest-oriented saving exhibiting the highest abandonment rate (81%). Findings carry implications for pension system design and savings promotion policy.