This text briefly explores methodological and conceptual issues surrounding the concept of poverty, analyzes its trends and promotes reflections on the phenomena of monetary poverty and material and social deprivation. In substantive terms, a diachronic and comparative analysis is made of the incidence of poverty and its threshold; the main social categories and territories with the highest incidence of poverty are identified; a simulation is promoted about the evolution of the minimum wage in the exposure to poverty of various social categories; the impacts of social transfers and two forms of social deprivation are measured; scenarios for the recent evolution of relative monetary poverty and material and social deprivation are conjectured.

The social insertion income is a last resort benefit designed to give some protection to the very poor. Although it has a lot of prominence in the public arena, this social benefit is not always debated in an informed manner