In the absence of any type of social transfer, poverty would be 40.3%, found researcher Carlos Farinha Rodrigues, updating data from the “Portugal Desigual” project, run by the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation.

In 2022, Portugal was the fourth most unequal country in the EU, pointed out the author of the work.

Material and social deprivation indicators show positive developments. However, some more sensitive aspects have worsened, such as the existence of more delays - caused by economic difficulties - in some of the regular payments.

In 2023, around 1.8 million residents in Portugal were in a situation of monetary poverty, that is, they earned a monthly income of fewer than 632 euros, and the intensity of poverty (which assesses how poor the poor are) remained practically unchanged (25.7%), above the 21.7% recorded in 2021, according to the same source.

The author concludes that the distribution of social benefits is also unequal.

In 2022, total social benefits represented 28.1% of families' equivalent income. Of these, 23.7% corresponded to old-age and survivors' pensions (the majority of which were contributory in nature) while 4.5% represented other types of social benefits.

“Analysing how the total social benefits are distributed along the income scale, it is possible to verify that 41.9% of these benefits went to the last quintile of the distribution (the 20% with the highest income) while the first quintile of the population ( the 20% with the lowest income, including the population in poverty) only received 10.7% of the total social benefits”, he stated in the document.

For the researcher, the explanation for this “profoundly asymmetric” distribution of social benefits lies in two reasons: the importance that old-age and survivor pensions have in total benefits and the fact that the highest contributory pensions are generally associated with the upper part of the income distribution.

“Using the data published by Eurostat, it is possible to verify that, in 2022, the redistributive effect of all social benefits was 26.7 percentage points in the EU, while in Portugal this value was 24.8”, explained Carlos Farinha Rodrigues.

Excluding old-age and survival pensions, the distance between Portugal and the European average would be “more significant”, he argued.

Looking at the last 30 years, the researcher concludes that there has been “a profound change” in the pattern of poverty.

“If in the early years, poverty among the elderly was one of the main factors of concern, in more recent years it is the incidence of poverty among children and young people that predominates”, he highlighted. As of 2007, the poverty rate for children and young people has “surpassed that of the elderly”, except in 2023.