Italy’s Young Populists Are Coddling the Old—and Holding the Country Back

At just 31 years old, Luigi Di Maio, head of Italy’s populist Five Star Movement, is no one’s image of a gerontocrat. Yet since helping form a new coalition government, Di Maio has given priority to rolling back a gradual increase in Italy’s retirement age—even though doing so would help older Italians while adding to the debt burden on his own generation.

Dismantling a money-saving 2011 pension measure is one of a handful of issues on which Di Maio sees eye to eye with his coalition partner, Matteo Salvini, 45, of the right-wing, anti-immigrant League party. Asked earlier this year about former Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi’s goal of preserving the “good parts” of the 2011 measure, Salvini said, “It’s no problem, because there are no good parts in it.”