In Portugal, the richest earn five times more than the poorest. Income distribution is one of the most unequal in the EU
The most recent from Eurostat, the European Union’s statistics institute, show the percentage of data from the European Union 20% of the richest Portuguese have incomes five times higher than the 20% poorest.
The data studied by the EU country quarter ‘Business’ show that, in this way, it is one of the blocks with the greatest disparity, in 2020, the EU country with the most equal distribution. Ahead of us were only Bulgaria, Lithuania and Latvia.
More specifically, the richest received a percentage of disposable income of 39.6%, while the poorest 20% had a disposable income of 7.9%, which represents a difference of more than five and Portugal below the European average, in which 8 % of income went to the poorest population.
The report also notes that, for the richest 20%, the EU’s disposable income is 38.1%, which makes Portugal above this average.
Another of the indicators from Europe8 was the median of equivalent disposable income in purchasing power parities, which in Portugal was an average of 12,333 in 2020, down from 17,333 in 2020, below71. However, Eurostat states that the indicator does not “capture the distribution of income among the population”, and is not very explicit regarding economic inequalities.