The association conducted a survey to assess Portugal’s living standards by analysing families’ ability to pay for those six areas and the results show that seven out of ten families cannot afford them.

In 1998 the results from a similar study showed that only 23% of the Portuguese families were able to pay all their monthly bills and 7% considered themselves poor.

Therefore, the 2019 barometer tried to understand in detail what families’ choices were when they could not afford everything they needed.

The results showed that people are cutting dental healthcare services, the purchase of glasses and even food products like meat or fish.

The Portuguese value their home, but 46% of survey respondents said they were not able to pay for all the electricity, water and gas bills.

Expectations for the future are not very good: half of the families said they would keep counting pennies and 25% considered 2019 would be even more difficult than the previous year.