Portugal HUMAN RESOURCES AND INCOME DISTRIBUTION
Fruit vendor, Porto
Courtesy Andrea Matles Savada
Portuguese fishermen unload their catch.
Courtesy Portuguese National Tourist Office, New York
One of the striking characteristics of the Portuguese
people
is their propensity to emigrate. In the late 1980s, an
estimated
3.5-4.0 million Portuguese passport holders were living in
foreign lands, equal to over a third of the population
residing
in Portugal. Emigration, which was once a reflection of
Portugal's international importance as a maritime and
colonial
power, became in the twentieth century, according to
Thomas G.
Sanders, "a reflection of its poverty and economic
weakness." As
a consequence of this population diaspora, large numbers
of
Portuguese migrants lived in Latin America (mainly Brazil
and
Venezuela), industrial Western Europe (mainly France and
Germany), Africa (predominantly the Republic of South
Africa),
and North America (the United States and Canada). The
Portuguese
emigrants to the EC countries, numbering over 1 million,
differed
in several ways from those who went overseas: most of them
were
temporary workers who planned to return to their homeland,
and
most originated from the mainland rather than Madeira and
the
Azores (Açores in Portuguese).
Portugal's comparative poverty within the EC was
closely
associated with lower per capita investment in human and
physical
capital. On the other hand, Portuguese workers were
recognized
for their strong work ethic, adaptability, and frugality.
Among
middle-income countries, few could match Portugal for its
high
family savings rate. Real wage rates over extended time
periods
closely reflected labor productivity, which in turn was
correlated with the factors mentioned above. Although
government
intervention could temporarily alter the distribution of
income
in favor of labor through the manipulation of wage rates
and
consumer prices--as indeed happened in the
mid-1970s--labor
productivity eventually determined labor's earnings.
Data as of January 1993
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