Why is Portugal relatively poor?

[Joso]

Your IQ must be lower than 93, that is for sure. Portugal is the only Southern European nation that is above OECD average in all fields (math, reading and science). We are even above countries such as Norway, Austria, Netherlands or Switzerland in certain fields like reading and science.

lol

[Universe]

LOL at Portugal Relatively Poor.

A glance of one of the most beautiful cities i've been:


What a poor country!

Ex-commie countries from the East that have similar standard of living to that of Portugal have often been called poor, shithole, backward, uncultured etc etc by on this forum, seen it many times.

Portugal is not poor, it's a totally ok country, but it's poorer than the rest of Western Europe, hence the usage of world "relatively" in the topic title(I don't consider Greece western european).

GDP/capita is not everything though. USA has one of the highest GDP/capita in the world but I see many American complain about the standard of living in USA, even on this forum we have American users that expressed interest in moving out of USA because they aren't satisfied with quality of life.

[Ülev]

maybe some wants to hide richness, some wants creatively grew up
creative accounting I mean

[Joso]

Lynn's methods are suspect. I stopped taking him seriously when he claimed Nepal had an IQ of 43. This is a country whose people terrace farm, build permanent structures, care for animals, etc. Such a country cannot have a people whose IQ is only 43. That's ridiculous.

+1

[gixajo]

1) Iberian Union was really terrible for portuguese treasure, Spain spent and waste most of it on aleatory spanish wars with every country in Europe.

2) Then, the country capital's and other coastal cities were completely destroyed in the strongest earthquake Europe ever recorded. This was the main contribution to ruined portuguese finances and with so many debts the country was finally under complete control under portuguese banks.

After the earthquake, Portugal started pressionate the Brazilian Colony to give more gold to built Lisbon again, this totally changed the politics here and the white colonials that feel themselves as cientizens of the Portugal started to see themselves as Brazilians and many session moviments started. Thats more or less what the schools teach here.

Please, you are saying that events of 3 centuries ago are the main cause?

After those events Portugal repeatedly surpassed Spain in terms of wealth.

All countries have ups and downs continuously. Portugal, Spain or Italy are at a similar level and our standard of living is undoubtedly one of the best in the world regardless of whether we are less wealthy than others.

[Roy]

GDP per capita is not a good indicator for what the average person earns, unless you really believe that people in Poland earn on average 2000 USD dollars a month. Granted I used to live in Poland ten years ago but it was a fairly cheap and inexpensive country for Portuguese standards. My students dorm rental was 60€ a month, which even back there was insanely inexpensive for Portuguese standards (back in 2009/2010 you would not find any rental in Portugal for students bellow 300€).

Yeah, obviously I know well that this data is not fully objective. And one could come to different conclusions looking at it from a different point of view.

[ÁGUIA]

Is this the Eastern version of Nassbean's if I am brown you are too ( in this case remove the word brown for poor)?

Ex-commie countries from the East that have similar standard of living to that of Portugal have often been called poor, shithole, backward, uncultured etc etc by on this forum, seen it many times.

Portugal is not poor, it's a totally ok country, but it's poorer than the rest of Western Europe, hence the usage of world "relatively" in the topic title(I don't consider Greece western european).

GDP/capita is not everything though. USA has one of the highest GDP/capita in the world but I see many American complain about the standard of living in USA, even on this forum we have American users that expressed interest in moving out of USA because they aren't satisfied with quality of life.

Depends how you access quality of live or living standards. Economy? Safety? Corruption? Healthcare? Political stability? Freedom? Happiness? Education? Infant mortality, and life expectancy? etc.

[Sebastianus Rex]

Portugal has far less immigrants/immigrant descendants, this really shouldn't be needed to be pointed out in 2020

Far less recent immigrants than those richer countries for sure but we have a large black population (most have Portuguese nationality) since the 1970's. Especially in the Lisbon metro area there is a very large black population. Of course the schools in those areas don't have good stats.

Regarding the question of the thread I would say that economy does not explain everything, Portugal is socially advanced in many aspects (healthcare, safety index, child mortality one of the lowest in the world, infrastructure, social cohesion is better than in most EU countries, etc) but the economy is based on low wages for EU standards and lacks dynamism because of heavy beauroracy in some sectors.

[gixajo]

Is this the Eastern version of Nassbean's if I am brown you are too ( in this case remove the word brown for poor)?



Depends how you access quality of live or living standards. Economy? Safety? Corruption? Healthcare? Political stability? Freedom? Happiness? Education? Infant mortality, and life expectancy? etc.

Most of those indicators matter much more than simply counting money.

Quality of life.

[Luso]

Portugal quality of life> Poland quality of life.



Oh... and should I mention the weather, food, futbol, and general culture are all miles better in Portugal than Poland? Fact.