National Strategy to Fight Poverty: Government presents over 270 measures

There are more than 270 measures to lower the risk of poverty and social exclusion rate to 10% in 2030. In 2022, the year with the most recent data, this rate was at 20.1%. It is an ambitious target, but the work carried out in the last few years to fight poverty has yielded remarkable results: between 2015 and 2022, 659 thousand people escaped poverty and last year Portugal recorded the biggest drop in the risk of poverty or social exclusion in the European Union.

The National Strategy to Fight Poverty (ENCP) will feature two action plans with two different timelines for execution (2022-2025 and 2026-2030).

The first Action Plan, approved by the Council of Ministers on 12 October contains more than 270 measures divided into six strategic pillars: reduce poverty for children and youths and their families, foster the full integration of young adults in society and the systemic reduction of their risk of poverty, encourage employment and skills as factors to eradicate poverty, reinforce social inclusion public policy, foster and improve the integration and protection of underprivileged people and groups, ensure territorial cohesion and local development, and, lastly, make fighting poverty a national goal. They are the outcome of a process where several areas of Government and public entities took part.

Learn about the set of innovative initiatives to be implemented by 2025 and the measures already under way.

Set of initiatives to be implemented by 2025:

• Set up a new integrated social assistance and intervention model at a local level with case managers to build customised paths given the people’s real needs, eliminating interaction with multiple bodies and making sure that there is a structural intervention that can transform lives by acting on the critical factors that lead to poverty

• Offer free kindergarten/nurseries to 120 thousand children in 2024

• Increase the number of students in pre-schools 

• Launch the National Employment Social Market

• Launch a programme for Assistance in Hiring and Employability for Disabled Persons that encompasses a side of entrepreneurship and self-employment

• Set up the "Single Desk for the Worker and Company" to guarantee integrated responses and a greater connection between workers and the labour market needs

• Set up the Single Social Benefit

• Expand and progressively qualify the home assistance services (SAD) New Generation Home Assistance SAD 4.0

• Broaden the coverage of the mobile Citizen Spaces, especially in regions with a lower population density and regions with a predominance of persons with lower digital literacy

• Hold Local Forums to Fight Poverty

• Design and implement the Energy Citizen Space to concentrate in one single area the services to advise and assist citizens when it comes to accessing the energy market, energy efficiency, and fighting energy poverty

• Set up a system to notify and identify signs of poverty risk

• Map out and define the social intervention projects of a regional scope to be implemented in all municipalities in order to ensure their integration and coherence

• Set up a dashboard with the main social indicators on a municipal level

• Set up a research agenda on poverty in Portugal together with partners from academia and the Science and Technology Foundation (FCT)

View here the document showing you more measures under the Action Plan, divided by audiences. 

Measures already under way, divided by target audience:

• Children

The Happy Kindergarten programme which in 2023 ensures 85 thousand children have access to free kindergarten; the Guarantee for Infancy programme that reaches 150 thousand children; strengthening the School Social Action policies (ASE); promoting foster care for children and youths at risk; structural rise in the amount paid as family bonus; expanding the projects under the Living Science Clubs at School, offering priority to schools in underprivileged settings.

• Youths

Boosting student housing at regulated prices by fulfilling the National Plan for Higher Education Student Housing (PNAES); setting up a priority contingent for students benefiting from grade A in social action in access to higher education initial training courses; opening the Avançar (Moving Forward) programme to hire for an indefinite period qualified youths with a monthly wage of at least €1,330 and offering a monthly allowance of €150 directly to youths during the first year of their work agreement; offering internship fees by the vocational training institute to graduates, to be increased to €1,020 in 2024; boosting protection of the rights of young student workers, who can now receive family bonus, scholarships, and survival pensions with a wage up to 14 x the minimum wage; boosting youth income tax – on the state budget for 2024 it is set to be 100% exemption in the first  year, 75% in the second, 50% in the third, and fourth, and 25% in the fifth year; increasing the ceilings on rents eligible for control under Porta65 Jovem, thereby doubling the number of associated households.

• The elderly

Expanding the network of facilities and innovative responses, requalifying and investing in integrated home care; implementing the NHS24 Desk for social responses and admission units managed by bodies belonging to the social and solidary sector; co-payments of medicines when purchasing them from chemists for persons benefitting from the Solidary Complement for the Elderly; updating pensions and increasing the Solidary Complement for the Elderly (it went up €50/month in the reference amount in 2023 and it will go up €62,45 in 2024, bringing forward to 2024 the convergence with the poverty threshold targeted for 2026).

• Workers

More than 70 measures that are part of the Decent Work Agenda to fight precarious work; rising wages; raising the minimum wage – it is expected to go up to 820 euros in 2024; supporting upskilling in the labour market, with a focus on the digital sector through the + Digital Youth Programme and the Upskill Programme for the unemployed or underemployed.