GINI Country Report: Growing Inequalities and their Impacts in Portugal

The country report for Portugal presents and discusses the main modifications in income distribution, highlighting the changes in its inequality and their main driving factors. The social, political and cultural potential impact of these changes on the Portuguese society is identified using the available data, as well as the role of the institutions and policies that influence and restrict the produced alterations. Crossing the information provided by both household and wage inequality enables the clear identification of time sub-periods where the behaviour of the different distributions indicates a consistent pattern of the evolution of inequality in Portugal. Firstly, in the period between the mid-eighties and 1994 there was a steep increase in inequality, whichever distribution is chosen. It should be remembered this is the period of strong growth and economic integration after Portugal became a member of the EU. The second half of the noughties until 2009 was another period when the behaviour of inequality is undisputed, with a significant reduction in the Gini coefficient across the distributions. However, the magnitude of this reduction was not sufficient to compensate for the increase in inequality that had occurred in the intervening period and therefore to restore the Gini to the values of the early nineties.