Why is Portugal relatively poor?

[Sebastianus Rex]

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.

Poland has a lot of culture, history and interesting places to visit. Why is portuguese richer ?

[Damião de Góis]

PD: Many regions have these numbers biased by the inmigration-emigration effect, for example the common english londoner surely has a high standard of living and a decent wage, while the official numbers drop because there are million of inmigrants surviving in the city. The contrary effect happens in the emigration countries, if the million of polish, romanian or portuguese inmigrants would be living in their home countries, it would reflect the real wages of them, because the wages officially increase when you lose this surplus population. For example, this explains the difference in the unemployment rate between Portugal and Spain, or the lack of unemployment in eastern countries.

I'm not sure if lack of emgration rates are the reason for Spain's unemployment. After it came down, it started to grow again after the 2008 crisis. Other countries with low emigration have low unemployment.



Also, even considering our emigration we also have immigration which is why population has stabilized in 10M for decades.

[Sebastianus Rex]

It´s not nominal wages, but wages by purchasing power parity.

Many things in Romania (housing, taxes...) are way cheaper than Portugal.

Exactly, nominal median monthly wage maps are very different.

[Aldaris]

Average IQ of 93. Acording to Richard Lynn's research and mediocre scores in PISA meassurements in comparission with the rest bof western Europe.

You can do a lot things with his research, including simply proving him wrong. He’s kind of a joke in the psychology community and most of his articles are put in the opinion section of the journal and/or are eventually retracted. That’s not something that happens often, mind you. Bottom line is, don’t reference this guy even in a semi-serious discussion.

[Damião de Góis]

Your IQ must be lower than 93

According to his own source and considering he's a latin american, it probably is.

[XenophobicPrussian]

Why not? He pointed out GDP/Capita and HDI, neither is amplified by the amount people living in the country. Switzerland has even less people than Portugal, yet its GDP/Capita and HDI are higher than Portugal's.



but doesn't PPP actually measure the quality of life/standard of living unlike nominal Gdp/capita? I don't see why prices shouldn't be a factor, it totally should be imo.

Yes, it would be. Polish PPP is still much lower than that of Germany, Netherlands, Poland, Sweden etc (countries where Poles usually migrate to)

Poles only make 300 US dollars less than Austria and 500 less than the UK adjusted for prices, yet they still migrate to those countries.

Yes, PPP is a better measure of how much money people have left in their pocket, but it is not a better measurement of how advanced/successful an economy is or what type of jobs people do, which is more relevant to the types of point people like the OP make. Government sales tax policies literally affect PPP, government sales tax isn't an indicator of economic achievement. Portugal is straight up a more advanced and more white collar economy than Poland is, Poland isn't even on the IMF's advanced economy list, Portugal(and Greece) are. PPP is not a pure result of a country's work, but partly circumstance, while nominal or real GDP per capita better reflects international differences. PPP is not the size of the economy divided by the amount of people in it, PPP is basically like a form of affirmative action. Look it up, there's plenty of sources out there stating why using PPP is flawed to see how strong an economy is.

Innovative economies is probably the closest indicator anyone will get to "economic performance", as it removes the resource/oil rich outliers like Gulf States, but yeah, GDP nominal per capita as far as GDP goes is the only way to compare the success of international economies. How much money people have left in their pockets(heavily dependant on government policy, tax rates, transport costs/location, etc) does not compare success.

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.

Far less any amount of immigrants, 1970s would be a pretty late start for non-white immigration compared to other W. Euro countries(but even in Portugal it probably did start earlier, just far less). It's pretty well known Portugal is one of the whitest countries in Europe, there's been estimates on this. Even in 1992 only 1.3% of the population were foreign born. France is the country most affected by the oldest generation immigrants, it doesn't have the highest foreign born % but it's very well known to be the least white country in Europe, estimates putting it around 70-75% white/W. Euro, Portugal is still far above 90%, estimates put it around 94-95% ethnic Portuguese and probably more overall white.

[Arsen_]

Correct me if I am wrong but it seems to me that Portuguese do not have powerful national idea that generates serious motivation and readiness to make sacrifices in the name of accelerated development of own country.

No country (regardless of IQ and the like) can make impressive progress if it lacks so-called passionaries ready to make sacrifices.

[Damião de Góis]

Far less any amount of immigrants, 1970s would be a pretty late start for non-white immigration compared to other W. Euro countries(but even in Portugal it probably did start earlier, just far less). It's pretty well known Portugal is one of the whitest countries in Europe, there's been estimates on this. Even in 1992 only 1.3% of the population were foreign born. France is the country most affected by the oldest generation immigrants, it doesn't have the highest foreign born % but it's very well known to be the least white country in Europe, estimates putting it around 70-75% white/W. Euro, Portugal is still far above 90%, estimates put it around 94-95% ethnic Portuguese and probably more overall white.

Counting foreign born population only shows a piece of the puzzle. Portugal has had blacks for centuries, it's documented and as an example it's shown in this painting from the 1600s:



But regardless, massive african immigration started in the 60s when a lot of portuguese started immigrating to escape the dictatorship. The authorities then started to bring in people from the colonies to compensate for population loss. Those people aren't counted as foreigners in any statistic. This immigration never stopped in the following decades and there are a huge number of blacks in the Lisbon metro area these days. They are also scatered around the country but more visible in areas around Lisbon. Immigration of people from other countries is relatively recent, but it was increasing at a big rate just before covid-19.
I don't know if Portugal has that few less immigrants compared to others, what i know is that Lisbon is getting more and more foreign.

The fact that it's possible for classrooms to look like this in certain areas shows that immigration isn't as insignificant as you are suggesting:

Correct me if I am wrong but it seems to me that Portuguese do not have powerful national idea that generates serious motivation and readiness to make sacrifices in the name of accelerated development of own country.

No country (regardless of IQ and the like) can make impressive progress if it lacks so-called passionaries ready to make sacrifices.

Not sure if i understand what you're saying. But are you suggesting we are not patriotic? We are, if there is one thing we are is patriotic.

[Rocinante]

Portugal is sooooo pooooooor...

[Sebastianus Rex]

Poles only make 300 US dollars less than Austria and 500 less than the UK adjusted for prices, yet they still migrate to those countries.

Yes, PPP is a better measure of how much money people have left in their pocket, but it is not a better measurement of how advanced/successful an economy is or what type of jobs people do, which is more relevant to the types of point people like the OP make. Government sales tax policies literally affect PPP, government sales tax isn't an indicator of economic achievement. Portugal is straight up a more advanced and more white collar economy than Poland is, Poland isn't even on the IMF's advanced economy list, Portugal(and Greece) are. PPP is not a pure result of a country's work, but partly circumstance, while nominal or real GDP per capita better reflects international differences. PPP is not the size of the economy divided by the amount of people in it, PPP is basically like a form of affirmative action. Look it up, there's plenty of sources out there stating why using PPP is flawed to see how strong an economy is.

Innovative economies is probably the closest indicator anyone will get to "economic performance", as it removes the resource/oil rich outliers like Gulf States, but yeah, GDP nominal per capita as far as GDP goes is the only way to compare the success of international economies. How much money people have left in their pockets(heavily dependant on government policy, tax rates, transport costs/location, etc) does not compare success.


Far less any amount of immigrants, 1970s would be a pretty late start for non-white immigration compared to other W. Euro countries(but even in Portugal it probably did start earlier, just far less). It's pretty well known Portugal is one of the whitest countries in Europe, there's been estimates on this. Even in 1992 only 1.3% of the population were foreign born. France is the country most affected by the oldest generation immigrants, it doesn't have the highest foreign born % but it's very well known to be the least white country in Europe, estimates putting it around 70-75% white/W. Euro, Portugal is still far above 90%, estimates put it around 94-95% ethnic Portuguese and probably more overall white.

Ignore those stats, foreign born means nothing, the vast majority of blacks were born in Portugal since the 1980's, there are some places in Lisbon metro area that are almost African enclaves.

Just for comparison I was in Madrid before the covid, after a large absence (15 yrs or so) and I barely saw blacks, completely different from Lisbon. Also shitloads of Pakis arrived in the last years.

I was pleasantly surprised with Madrid, despite CV bitching it is still remarquably european comparing with other EU major cities. Most of the obvious immigrants I saw were latin americans. Barcelona is much worse from what I heard, huge north african immigration wich I sidn't saw in Madrid.

France is still around 80% white, 12 million of non-euro origin is the estimate leaked by some unnoficial internal sources, but given their birth rates of course the numbers you provided are not too far away in time. 1/3 + of the newborns are already not of European origin.