During the Fascist period, the city of Rome underwent a period of great demographic expansion, that will lead quickly to more than a million of inhabitants. This population boom is due mainly by the arrival of an increasing number of immigrants from many parts of the country. These newcomers faced a housing market inflated by the continuous growth in demand. For this reason are born a series of spontaneous settlements.

In order to monitor the phenomenon, the Governatorato of the city organizes, from the second half of the 20s, a series of censuses. To that of 1933 it was possible to identify the individual survey forms within which abound information on family composition, the profession and the income of the individual components. Italian archives will continue to demonstrate the inexhaustible mines of family budgets.