According to the report, presented by researchers Susana Peralta, Bruno Carvalho and Mariana Esteves, from Nova School of Business & Economics, one of the faculties of Universidade Nova de Lisboa, “children [0 to 17 years old] are a of the population groups most vulnerable to situations of poverty and social exclusion.

“The at-risk-of-poverty rate among children increased between 2018 and 2019 (from 18.5% to 19.1%). This means that, in 2019, there are more than 330,000 poor minors in Portugal”, reads the report.

On the other hand, poverty affected 25.5% of single-parent families, that is, about a quarter of all households, with this figure having decreased by 8.4 percentage points compared to 2018, although these families continue to be the type of household with the highest at-risk-of-poverty rate.

With regard to housing and food shortages, and already in relation to 2020, “more than one in four children lived in houses with a roof, walls, windows and floors permeable to water or are rotten”, while 11% of the dwellings had no proper heating.

“The inability to eat, at least every two days, a meal of meat, fish (or vegetarian equivalent), has remained stable over the last three years, with a slight improvement in 2020 (from 1.9% to 1.8%)”, say the researchers.