Portugal: social transfers have low impact on poverty in the country

  • Mariana Kouprianoff
  • 13 November 2018

Eurostat estimates that in 2017, social transfers in Portugal resulted in a reduction of 22.5% of people "at risk of poverty".

Portugal is one of the European countries in which the weight of social transfers is lower, meaning it had a low impact on reducing the number of people at risk of poverty. Last year, the social transfers only took out of poverty risk less than a quarter of the Portuguese population.

The data was released this Tuesday by Eurostat, who also estimated that the social transfers resulted in a reduction of 32.4% in the number of people classified as “at risk of poverty” within the EU.

According to the European statistics office, there are very different realities across Europe, with social transfers’ impact on the number of people at risk of poverty being the highest in Finland (57%) and Denmark (51%). In nine member states, the reduction of poverty was below 25%, and of those, the smallest reductions were in Greece (16%) and Romania (17%).

Indeed Finland takes the lead, being able to take out of risk of poverty 56.9% of those considered. On the far end is Greece, which only was able to take out of poverty risk, 15.8% of the population, resorting to social benefits.

In Portugal, social transfers have reduced the number of people at risk of poverty by 22.5%. The impact of these social transfers has been on a downward spiral in the country since 2010 when the social benefits were able to reduce by 36.8% the number of people at risk.