Income and wealth percentile in Portugal
a year per adult, before tax; half of adults in Portugal earn less
The wealth ladder in Portugal
The middle adult in Portugal holds €67,910 in net worth. The top 10% of holders begins at €403,235 and the top 1% at €1,725,061, which is 25 times the middle.
In Portugal the middle adult earns €21,094 a year before tax and holds €67,910 in net worth. The top 10% of earners begins at €54,168, and the top 1% of wealth at €1,725,061. Figures are per adult, in EUR.
Every published line
Income and net worth per adult in Portugal, in EUR.
| The line | Income | Net worth |
|---|---|---|
| Median | €21,094 | €67,910 |
| Average | €29,726 | €189,406 |
| Top 10% | €54,168 | €403,235 |
| Top 1% | €145,051 | €1,725,061 |
| Top 0.1% | €400,072 | €6,910,667 |
| Top 0.01% | €1,076,035 | €27,455,459 |
What the numbers say about Portugal
Portuguese median income is around €21,100 per adult, with an average of €29,700. Those numbers sit at the bottom of the Western European range, well below Spain and around half of France. Portugal lost much of its productive base during the 2010-2014 troika programme, with austerity that compressed wages, raised taxes, and pushed roughly 500,000 working-age people to emigrate. The recovery since 2014 has been steady but slow, and real wages have only recently regained pre-crisis levels.
The recovery has been deeply uneven geographically. Lisbon and the Algarve have absorbed most of the new investment, the digital-nomad inflow, and the golden-visa programme that ran from 2012 to 2023. Property prices in central Lisbon roughly doubled between 2015 and 2022, with similar moves in Porto and along the Algarve coast. Outside those zones, much of the country, especially the interior Alentejo and the northern Trás-os-Montes, has continued to lose working-age population at rates comparable to rural Spain. The country runs at two speeds, and the gap is widening.
The golden-visa programme reshaped the wealth picture at the top. Between 2012 and 2023, Portugal granted residency in exchange for property purchases above €500,000 (or €350,000 in lower-density areas). The programme attracted roughly €7 billion in real-estate investment, much of it from China, Brazil, South Africa, and the United States. Lisbon prices were lifted accordingly, often beyond what local wages could support. The programme was scaled back sharply in late 2023, but the price effects remain in the market. The top 1% threshold for wealth sits at €1.73 million, with the top 0.1% above €6.9 million, both pulled upward by the inflow.
Wealth holds up better than income, the consistent southern European pattern. Median household net worth per adult is around €68,000, modest in European terms but several multiples of Portuguese median income. Homeownership runs around 75 percent, with strong intergenerational transfer of property. Younger Portuguese often inherit a flat or family house even when their salaries are very low. The wealth flows that emigrant Portuguese send back from Switzerland, France, and the UK also support household balance sheets in the interior, though they rarely show up directly in wealth statistics.
Two themes shape the next decade. The end of the Non-Habitual Resident tax regime in 2024 may slow the inflow of foreign professionals who pulled Lisbon prices upward. And the brain drain has not really reversed: Portuguese graduates still leave in large numbers for higher wages in the EU core, holding the domestic labour market thin in skilled trades and healthcare.
Common questions
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Where do these figures come from?
Nearby by median income
Every free tool
Method and sources
- World Inequality DatabasePretax national income per adult and net household wealth per adult.
- World Bank Informal Economy DatabaseInformal output as a share of GDP, the input to the level correction.
How the lines are worked out
The national distribution is fitted as a log-normal body with a Pareto top tail and read at each published point, per adult. Where a country’s own records measure less activity than its output implies, the level of the distribution is lifted toward the implied figure and the spread is left as published: that correction is set out in full on how we measure.
How a percentile is read off it
A percentile is the share of adults at or below a figure. The percentile methodology page states the fit, the anchors and the vintage.
What these figures do not cover
- Per adult, not per household. Couples are counted separately, so household figures run higher.
- Income is gross, before income tax and employee contributions.
- Local currency at the reference rate carried with the record, €1 = $1.08.
- A national figure says nothing about a region or an occupation inside it.
Last updated July 2026.
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