Household Wealth in Portugal Climbs 67 Percent in 15 Years to 1,196 Billion Euros, and the Richest Tenth Still Own Almost 59 Percent of It
New Bank of Portugal accounts show rising home values drove household net wealth up by 480 billion euros between 2010 and 2025. The top 10 percent held 58.9 percent of it in 2025, and the poorer half 5.9 percent.
The net wealth of Portuguese households reached 1,196 billion euros in 2025, up 480 billion euros, or 67 percent, on 2010, the Banco de Portugal (Bank of Portugal) reported on Tuesday. The richest 10 percent of households held 58.9 percent of that total in 2025, while the poorer half of households held 5.9 percent.
The figures come from a new set of experimental statistics, the distributional wealth accounts, which take the totals from the national accounts and share them out between groups of households using the bank's own household finance survey, the Inquérito à Situação Financeira das Famílias (Household Finance Survey, Portugal's part of a euro-area survey run with the European Central Bank).
What counts as wealth
Net wealth here is what households own minus what they owe. On the asset side that means homes and other property, bank deposits, shares and stakes in businesses (including family firms), bonds, investment funds and life insurance. Cash, occupational pensions and vehicles are left out. On the other side sit loans, and 77 percent of household debt in 2025 was mortgage debt, down from 82 percent in 2010.
Housing did most of the work
Homes are by far the largest asset. Their value rose by almost 50 percent, from 473 billion euros to 708 billion euros, mainly because property prices rose, the bank says. Even so, housing's share of household assets slipped from 54 percent to 52 percent, as business stakes climbed from 14 percent to 19 percent of assets and deposits from 16 percent to 19 percent.
Household wealth fell during the financial and euro debt crises to a low of 656 billion euros in 2013, then climbed every year as asset prices recovered. Measured against the size of the economy it barely moved: about 390 percent of gross domestic product in 2025, ten points lower than in 2010, with a peak of about 433 percent in 2020, when the pandemic shrank output.
Who holds it
The top 10 percent's share of net wealth stayed close to 59 percent throughout the 15 years, ranging between 57.4 percent and 60.8 percent in the bank's annual series. Their assets also look different. Homes made up about 74 percent of the assets of households below the median, but less than 40 percent for the wealthiest tenth, whose stakes in companies accounted for 28 percent of their assets.
Because so much of the poorer half's wealth is a home, they hold a larger slice of the total than their counterparts elsewhere: on average 6.1 percent between 2010 and 2025 in Portugal, against 4.5 percent across the euro area, according to the bank.
How Portugal compares
- Median wealth: the household in the middle of the distribution had 104,000 euros of net wealth in 2025, up from 77,000 euros in 2010. In the euro area the median rose from 106,000 euros to 151,000 euros, so Portugal went from about 72 percent of the euro-area level to 69 percent.
- Inequality: the Gini index of wealth, where 100 means one household owns everything, stood at 72.6 in Portugal and 73.1 in the euro area in 2025.
- Top 10 percent: the European Central Bank's distributional wealth accounts put the wealthiest tenth's share at 57.2 percent for the euro area at the end of 2025, against 58.9 percent for Portugal.
Our 5 October report on the Allianz global wealth study looked at financial wealth only, leaving out the homes that dominate Portuguese balance sheets. For the forces behind those home values, see the Bank of Portugal's recent study of housing demand and Portugal's place at the top of the EU for house price growth.
