Poverty in Portugal

The National Statistics Institute, based on the Living Conditions and Income Survey (ICOR) carried out in 2023, recently revealed that poverty has increased in Portugal. It rose by 0.6 percentage points (pp), from 16.4 per cent in 2021 to 17.0 per cent in 2022. In 2022, 1.781 million people had incomes below the poverty line.

In addition, the worsening of poverty among children and young people was more significant than among the population as a whole, with the poverty rate among the under-18s rising from 18.5 per cent to 20.7 per cent. In 2022, around 346,000 children and young people lived in poor families.

Significant increases in the level of poverty are also visible in particularly vulnerable groups. The poverty rate among single-parent families increased by 3.2 pp, among the unemployed by 3.3 pp and among other inactive people by 3.4 pp.

In educational terms, our situation is not good either. The recent PIAAC results showed very poor performance in all three dimensions: literacy, numeracy and problem-solving.

In my opinion, we need new approaches and very quickly!

The recent PIAAC 2023 survey on adult skills results revealed (see OECD report on PIAAC 2023) that many adults across OECD countries taking part in the survey score on average at Level 1 or below in the proficiency scales: 26% in literacy, 25% in numeracy and 29% in adaptive problem solving. Survey also revealed that adults with highly educated parents have better literacy skill levels than those with less educated parents. Namely, adults with highly educated parents outscored those with low-educated parents by 50 points in literacy, 49 points in numeracy and 42 points in adaptive problem solving, on average. In some countries, the gaps were especially large, in some countries increases were recorded in the socio-economic gap in literacy among 16-24 year-olds.  

It is believed that parents from non-supportive backgrounds are hindered in taking care of family literacy due to two essential key factors: low social capital and low skills. At the same time, the educational systems are not successful in overcoming the differences in the social capital. 

So, the question is what can be done regarding the parental education effect in order to create more equitable and fair education? 

Great topic for discussion!