Portugal SOCIAL WELFARE
The Bridge of April 25 at Lisbon
Courtesy General Directorate of Mass Communication, Lisbon
On most indices of social modernization, Portugal
ranked at
or near the bottom for all of Western Europe. Even in the
early
1990s, despite some significant economic growth in the
second
half of the 1980s, Portugal remained relatively poor by
West
European standards. Although its range of public welfare
programs
was extensive, it lacked the funds to fully implement them
and to
pay substantial benefits.
Charity and alms-giving were traditionally thought to
be the
responsibility of the church. It provided welfare to the
poor and
took care of the sick, widows, and orphans. In addition,
landowners and employers fulfilled their obligations of
Christian
charity by aiding the less fortunate through gifts,
assistance,
patronage, and benefits. The charitable institution
established
by Queen Leonor in the late fifteen century, Santa Casa de
Misericórdia, had, even in the early 1990s, offices all
through
Portugal. Its charitable operations were financed by the
national
lottery. This system of charity provided by the church and
the
elite probably worked tolerably well through the 1920s, as
long
as Portugal remained a rural and Roman Catholic society.
But
urbanization, secularism, and large-scale impersonal
organizations rendered the old system inadequate.
Salazar's corporative system attempted to fill the void
but
did so poorly. Only in the 1960s, far later than in other
countries, were the first steps taken toward a modern
state-run
welfare system. As could be expected, the services this
system
provided were incomplete, irregular, and woefully
underfunded.
Urban centers received some benefits, but almost none went
to the
countryside. During the revolutionary 1970s, numerous
health and
social welfare programs were established, but only in the
1980s
did Portugal have the stability and the resources to begin
their
implementation.
Data as of January 1993
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