Post-2008 crisis in the Portuguese cities of NUT III Oeste: unemployment and social exclusion

Abstract

In this paper, we evaluate the impact of the post-2008 crisis on unemployment, accessibility to sources of income and essential goods, and on situations of poverty and exclusion experienced by families living in the cities of NUT III Oeste (Alcobaça, Caldas da Rainha, Peniche and Torres Vedras). The results are based on a fieldwork (387 households were inquired and the collected information refer to 1,028 individuals) that was conducted from April 4 to May 6, 2014. Overall, the results we attained quantify and qualify the decline of the access to employment and, as a consequence, to sources of income by the households, exposing multiple dimensions of the social exclusion that these communities experienced in the six years that were analyzed (between 2008 and 2014).