Socioeconomic Typologies for Portugal: A Look at the Present and the Future through the Lens of Social, Regional and Environmental Development

There are considerable differences in Portugal’s economy between regions and economic sectors. This work aims to generate an analysis of the country’s economy considering five main themes: current economic situation, future competitiveness, social inequality, regional inequality, and decarbonization of the economy. Based on the Portuguese interregional input-output matrix of 2017 and using established methods in input-output analysis, we developed a typological view based on indicators calculated at the sectoral and regional levels of the country – 7 regions and 65 sectors. The results show the relative strengths and weaknesses for each sector and region. With the results, we transformed each index into a score with a value between 0 and 1. Finally, we developed a tool that allows choosing the level of importance for each of the five dimensions of analysis and for each indicator, in order to generate a weighted average score for each sector and region by dimension and also a global weighted average score across all dimensions. This type of analysis enables the formulation of strategies for creating public policies or investment plans aimed at strengthening social, regional, and environmental development according to the social planner’s preferences.