A quarter of Portugal’s Population is poor, despite a €79 increase in the average monthly household income last year.
The figures from the Income and Living Conditions from the National Statistics Institute showed 2,595 million people, including 487,000 under 18s and 468,000 over 65s, were barely scraping by and were classified as poor, or close to poverty and social exclusion.
Cramped homes, properties without bathrooms, poor lighting and damp are the biggest problems for poor families with children.
From 2015 to 2016, the average disposable income per household increased €79, to €1,497 per month, or €17,967 per year. This was the same level as in 2008, the year of the economic crash.
Poverty was marginally down (1.6%) despite incomes going up - the answer to this incongruity is that prices for essential such as fuel went up 5.9% between 2013 and 2015.
This led to the "overburden of housing expenses" which affected "almost 30% of the population with the lowest incomes during 2016."