The percentage of the population that lived, in the last year, overcrowded and in unsanitary conditions – without a bathroom inside the house, with leaks or lack of natural light – reaches 6%, a strong increase compared to the latest data available, from three years earlier.
The indicator, part of the data from the survey on the population’s living conditions and income, is released this Friday by the National Statistics Institute (INE) after its publication was interrupted in 2020 and 2021.
The rate of severe housing deprivation in the country has seen a sharp increase, compared to a value that was just 3.9% in 2020.
INE data show that, as expected, severe housing deprivation mainly affects the population at risk of poverty, with a deprivation rate of 14.8%, and in the remaining population – income above a threshold of 591 euros per month – the severe deprivation rate is 4.2%.
There is also a greater concentration of population living in severely degraded housing conditions in urban areas, where the deprivation rate reaches 7.7%. In rural areas it is 3.3%.
Children and adolescents are, above all, the group most impacted by the deterioration of housing conditions for the population, with the rate of severe home deprivation reaching 10.7% among those aged up to 17 – that is, one in every ten minors in Portugal.
In the population between 18 and 64 years old, the rate is 6.2%, while among those over 65 years old it is much lower, at 2.2%.
According to INE, more than a fifth of families with children (21.1%) lived in overcrowdingwith almost half also living in unhealthy homes.
“If a simplification exercise is carried out, in which only problems related to sanitary facilities and the quality of the basic physical structures of the accommodation (ceiling, walls, floor, windows) are considered, it is observed that 33% of the population lived , in 2023, with deprivation in at least one of the items considered” also indicates INE.
Infiltration and humidity are the main problem, affecting 29% of the population.
The data now published by INE also updates the housing cost burden rate, one of the main indicators under surveillance in European social policies.
According to INE, last year the percentage of the population that lived in households where housing costs consumed at least 40% of disposable income was 4.9%.
Here, there is a slight reduction compared to the rate calculated in 2022, which had been 5%.
According to INE, last year 18.8% of the population at risk of poverty was overburdened with housing expenses, compared to 2.0% for the rest of the population.
“The overload rate was highest for residents in predominantly urban areas, 6.2%, falling to 5.2% for residents in moderately urban areas and to 2.6% for residents in predominantly rural areas”, adds .
