A few weeks of the elections, electoral promises multiply, especially in areas where the government has the highest margin of intervention-such as civil service wages, pensions, social support and the minimum wage, which is directly fixed by the government itself.
Analyzing the Portuguese population, in particular its voters*, we found that 61% of the Portuguese electorate has its income, somehow dependent on the state – there are 27 more percentage points than it was in 1980. The country has changed over the past four decades, is more aged, although it does not explain everything. This greater dependence on voters in the face of the state has, inevitably, implications for the priorities of those who govern us and even the way potential reforms in the machine and state services are better or less welcomed by the population.
In 1980, according to the calculations of Vítor Bento, economist and current president of the Portuguese Banks Association, 34%of the Portuguese adult population had state -dependent income, especially pensioners (25%), whether social security (SS) or General Retirement Caixa (CGA), and public officials (AP) or the State Business Sector (SEE).
By 2023, reality was already very different. Using Vítor Bento’s same methodology, 61% of Portuguese adults have state -dependent income, which is the direct source of income (49%), is the decision -making decision -making paid by the productive sector (12% receive a national minimum wage set by the state).
The population is more aged and, of course, pensioners remain the majority group (35%), but their weight in total dependents even decreased. In 1980 it was 71% and in 2022 had dropped to 57%. That is, increased state dependence goes beyond population aging. Civil servants today weigh 10% in the total of the Portuguese adult population, 3% receive the social income of insertion that did not exist in 1980 and 12% receive the national minimum wage (indirectly dependent on the state that represented only 2% of the adult population in 1980). The weight of the beneficiaries of unemployment allowance remains residual, below 2%.
The numbers presented here help to perceive the weight that each sector of the population has in the way it influences, or not, political decision makers and the way the political agenda is conditioned by the legitimate interests of each of these sectors and voter groups.
* Some methodological notes: the denominator of the chart is not the number of voters, but the resident population of 18 or older, since Vítor Bento considers that the number of voters is disadvantaged from reality; It was considered only 85% of the sum of the pensions because there are some cases where a pensioner receives more than one pension.
- The facts seen to the magnifying glass by André Pinção Lucas e Juliano Ventura – A partnership of the postcard with the Institute
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