Quantifying the third sector in Portugal : an overview and evolution from 1997 to 2007

I am grateful to the Portuguese Ministry of Labor and Social Solidarity, Statistics Department, for access to the data used in this study (Quadros de Pessoal). I would also like to express my gratitude to Miguel Reis Portela and Nelson Areal for their assistance in dealing with the database and STATA. I am also indebted to two anonymous reviewers for their useful comments on an earlier version of this paper.This paper presents a global overview of the third sector in Portugal drawing on data from a linked employer-employee database – “Quadros de Pessoal”, which is based on a compulsory annual inquiry to organizations, making it a better source of information than those based on sample surveys and estimates. This study advances on previous overviews by providing more updated numbers for organization size, age, gross revenue and employment levels, as well as their distribution across the ICNPO third sector activity classification. The evolution of these variables from the period 1997-2007 is also analyzed. The Portuguese third sector has been fast growing, with revenues amounting to 5.64% of Portugal’s GDP and employment representing 4% of the country’s employment in 2007. It is mainly composed of very small organizations, with diminutive revenues. Perhaps its most striking features are the uneven distribution of employment and revenue and the strong concentration on Social services

Admission conditions and graduates' employability

We evaluate the information content of admission conditions for study programs’ quality by investigating its relationship with graduates’ employability. We find that study programs with larger numeri clausi are associated with a higher probability of finding a job. Additionally, compulsory admission exams seem to be informative about study programs’ quality. Namely, study programs requiring the Math exam appear to be linked with lower unemployment propensity. Cardoso et al. (2008), however, found that those programs face lower demand when compared to other studies. These paradoxical results suggest that students’ choices may be based on insufficient information on returns to higher education investment. That information failure indicates that a Government intervention may be due.NIPE – Núcleo de Investigação em Políticas Económicas – is supported by the Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology through the Programa Operacional Ciência e Inovação 2010 (POCI 2010) of the III Quadro Comunitário de Apoio (QCA III), which is financed by FEDER and Portuguese funds