This was despite household income in Portugal having risen by €292 per year, including welfare payments, to €8,435 since 2008, Eurostat revealed at the beginning of this week.
According to figures published by the European Union’s official statistics office, Romania’s citizens were at greatest risk of material deprivation last year (24.5 percent, or almost one in every four Romanians), followed by Latvia (22.5 percent), Lithuania (22.2 percent), Spain (22.1 percent), Bulgaria (22.1 percent), Estonia (21.6 percent), Greece (21.4 percent), Italy (19.9 percent) and Portugal (19.5 percent).
Compared to 2008, before the financial crisis, the risk of material deprivation has increased in Portugal by one percentage point.
Eurostat, which published its figures on the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, found the rates fell in 2015 to close to pre-crisis levels.
In terms of social exclusion, over a third of the population was at risk of poverty in Bulgaria (41.3 percent), in Romania (37.3 percent) and in Greece (37.3 percent), whilst in Portugal in 2015 the rate was over a quarter (26.6 percent).
The EU member states with the lowest levels of social exclusion were the Czech Republic (14 percent), Sweden (16 percent), the Netherlands and Finland (16.8 percent each), Denmark and France (17.7 percent each).
According to a study published in September by the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation, titled “Unequal Portugal,” the number of people in Portugal living below the poverty line increased between 2009 and 2014, by 116,000 to 2.02 million.
A quarter of children and 10.7percent of workers live below the poverty line.
Meanwhile, in response to Eurostat’s and the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation’s findings, the Portuguese Minister for Labour and Welfare, Vieira da Silva, said this week that Portugal is a “country with too much poverty,” and it “is urgent” to change this situation and the “greatest priority” should be given to fighting child poverty.
“Eradicating poverty should be the greatest ambition of our society, and has to be the greatest ambition of our generations,” Vieira da Silva said in a message published on the government’s official Youtube and Twitter accounts marking the International Day for the Eradication of Poverty, commemorated on Monday.
In his message the minister said “poverty often means war,” “refugees”, “abandoned elderly people,” and “children with no support,” and “almost always means unemployment and “so often means inequality.”
Speaking specifically about Portugal, the minister said it was a “country with too much poverty,” and this situation needs to change.
“Naturally we have to have priorities, and the biggest priority is combating child poverty, the one that, if it is not broken, will perpetuate the generational cycle of exclusion and inequality,” Vieira da Silva said.
With this in mind, he said, in 2017 child support payments will be increased.
One in five people in Portugal have a monthly income of less than €422, according to the Francisco Manuel dos Santos Foundation and between 2009 and 2014 the income of Portuguese families fell by 12percent, or €116 per month.