(ANSA) - Rome, December 4 - Research firm Censis on Friday released the 49th edition of its annual study on the social situation in Italy, revealing the country's changing face in areas including lifestyle, finances, media, technology, and healthcare.

The study said Italy is currently experiencing a "dangerous poverty in planning for the future" resulting in the prevalence of a "collective existential lethargy" leading to inertia and a "day-to-day" mentality that tends to value individual interests over those of the wider community.

However, it also revealed that this year's "primacy of politics" with business-oriented reforms and an emphasis on collective involvement in financial recovery have contributed to an upsurge in the country's economic and social dynamism.

The study said development is characterised by the capacity for inventiveness, citing examples of young people who go abroad for work or form start-ups, families who round out their income by renting out their properties as bed and breakfasts, and businesses that invest in the green economy and continued innovation.

One area where financial recovery was seen this year was in purchasing power, where the number of families whose purchasing power increased outnumbered those whose purchasing power has decreased, 25% to 21% respectively. This year's purchasing power increase was the first since the start of the financial crisis, but the survey added that 20% of Italian families are unable to cover all of their expenses with their income.

The way Italians shop and consume is also changing with the times, with 15 million Italians who said they buy online and two million (4%) who said they participate in car sharing.

The mix of street-level shops in Italy's urban centres trended towards prepared food, with a 37% increase in take-away food shops since 2009, and a more than 10% decrease in hardware shops, boutiques, bookshops and butcher shops.

Also on the rise over the past six years are restaurants (up 15.5%), coffee bars (+10%), and ice cream and pastry shops (+8%).

The research institute said the increases are due to low start-up costs, foreigners' initiative, and the pervasiveness of food in daily life.

In terms of mass media, the survey said Pope Francis is the "media phenomenon of the year", as 77.9% of Catholics in Rome called the pope's charisma one of Catholicism's strengths.

Censis also cited data from American fact tank Pew Research Center, showing that Pope Francis outranked both US presidential candidate Hillary Clinton and Russian President Vladimir Putin in US media coverage.

In the school setting, 54.9% of school principals in Italy have dealt with cyber bullying cases.

On a scale of 1-10, school principals rated cyber bullying as the top online threat at 7, and 58.5% of them said their greatest challenge with cyber bullying was trying to convince parents of its seriousness.

The news wasn't positive for views on public healthcare, as more than four in 10 Italians in the survey said they think healthcare is worsening, a figure that increases to six in 10 in Italy's south.

Survey respondents said problems include rising costs and long wait times that often drive patients to pay out-of-pocket at private healthcare providers who offer competitive rates with shorter waits.

In children's healthcare, four in 10 Italian parents of children between the ages 0-15 look for information online about whether or not to vaccinate their children, with nearly half of them reading information on social networks.

Despite the fact that 54.8% of parents said they were informed by their child's physician about vaccinations, three in 10 of the parents in the survey said they would like to know more. Only 35.7% of parents surveyed said they are openly favorable to vaccinations, while 32.3% are only in favor of those vaccinations that are mandatory and free.

