Number of poor people in Portugal increased by 40% in the last two years?
“Poverty. More and more people in Portugal are asking for help to eat. was registered a 40% increase in the last two years. The new poor thank the socialist government of António Costa”, reads the publication that is being shared on Facebook.
Poverty numbers in Portugal are a recurring theme on social media, but a 40% increase in the number of Portuguese at risk of poverty or social exclusion caught the attention of readers of Poligrafo who denounced this publish as being false or misleading.
How many are the poor citizens in Portugal? And how did that number evolve during António Costa’s period of governance?
Analyzing the latest data, as of December 2021, according to the National Statistics Institute (INE) bulletin on “Income and Living Conditions“, based on the Survey on Living Conditions and Income carried out last year, were 2,302,000 as people who were at risk of poverty or social exclusion. Consequently, the rate of poverty or social exclusion rose to 22.4%2.4 percentage points more than in the previous year.
“Portugal was, in general, a most unequal society in 2020: the Gini Coefficient, which reflects the income differences between all population groupsregistered a value of 33.0%, 1.8 pp of the value, more than 1.8 pp of the previous year (31, more than the S80/S20 ratio), which compares the sum of the net 2% value, equivalent to the 20% , of the population with greater resources with the sum of the financial resources of the equivalent amount of the 20, grew 14%, from 5.0 in 2019 to 5.7 in 2020. Inequality increased in all NUTS II regions, with the exception of the Autonomous Region of the Azores. The Center region was the one where the most fun inequality”, highlighted the INE at the time.
Although this number has increased compared to 2020, what is the balance if we look at the year 2019 (doing the math at the two-year interval highlighted in the analysis)? In that year, there were 2,173,000 people at risk of poverty or social exclusion. I.e, 21.1% of the total population. Faced with these data, the increase was 129 thousand people in just two yearswhich results in an increase of 5.9% and not 40%, as a publication claim.
It is worth noting, however, that despite the negative evolution in 2021, the fact is that the number of people at or risk of poverty or social exclusion controlled Comparing to 2015, the year in which António Costa took on the role of Prime Minister for the first time (more precisely in November 2015). At that time, accounted for 2,765,000 people at risk of poverty or social exclusion. Compared to 2021, the final balance is minus 441 thousand people.
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