One in four people in Portugal categorised as 'poor'

Paul Rees 16 May 2017

beggar 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."

Comments

+1 #3 Malcolm.H 2017-05-17 18:18

Time and again we are faced with the difficulties of applying 1st World modern socio.economic analysis to the more backward parts of the European Union. Who gathers this information and verifies its accuracy? Substantial parts of the Portuguese 'working population have never been on the radar and even now given Portugal's history of the last century - will not accurately declare their means. Yet many will be doing nicely.

Greece, simply because the OECD and IMF etc scrutinise it so much shows similar traits to Portugal. So that, for example, some retirees have multiple pensions and lucrative incomes from rentals and others have next to none. The wealthier keeping their money off shore and earning income out of Portugal.

+2 #2 Ed 2017-05-17 09:33

Quoting valery:

if one in 4 families are poor it must be said then three out of 4 are not, what sections of the community have been investigated and which sort of poverty are you referring to, absolute poverty or relative poverty, most countries share these worries, Portugal is no different from other western countries.

The 'at risk of poverty or social exclusion' indicator combines the concepts of relative poverty risk i.e. people with an annual income per adult below the poverty threshold - and of being materially deprived.

Then, 'hours worked' is added into the mix.

The thing with these stats is the movement, rather than the detail which often is inpenetrable.

The national minimum wage is €7,420 a year and I am surpised the average was so high at €17,967.

At the end of 2016, one in five Portuguese had lived the year live with a monthly income below €422, according to Minister of Labour, Solidarity and Social Security, Vieira da Silva (Oct 2017).

Stats never seem to add up or compare equally!

Ed

+2 #1 valery 2017-05-17 09:19

if one in 4 families are poor it must be said then three out of 4 are not, what sections of the community have been investigated and which sort of poverty are you referring to, absolute poverty or relative poverty, most countries share these worries, Portugal is no different from other western countries.

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