Argentina: Poverty Rises 13 Points in Milei’s Two Months Ruling

According to the analysis of the Social Observatory of the Catholic University of Argentina, some 27 million people are poor in the country and places the causes of this growth in the devaluation and the inflationary surge that the government of Javier Milei took in just two months.

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The depreciation of the currency and the unrestrained escalation of the prices of products of the basic basket influenced the abrupt fall of the purchasing power of the middle sectors, which quickly became larger the poverty figures in Argentina.

The Social Observatory of the university conducting the study projects that the indigent population increased from 9.6 per cent in the third quarter of 2023 to 14.2 per cent in December 2023 and to 15 per cent in January 2024.

Actual record of 57.4% is the highest level of the series started in 2004, when it was 54%, and it is projected that there would be almost 27 million poor people throughout the country, of which 7 million would be destitute.

In January, in the Metropolitan Region of Buenios Aires the poverty basket for an adult was $ 193 146 Argentine pesos (ARS) and for a family type of $ 596 823 (ARS), without considering the price of rents.

The UCA Report explains that "to weigh the worsening of the social situation, two simulation exercises were carried out according to the adjustments applied to the microdata of the EDSA (Social Debt Survey Argentina) of the third quarter of 2023".

"The first recalculates the level of indigence and poverty in the situation of increasing baskets and updating of labor and non-labor income in December 2023. The second of the exercises reproduces the situation of basket costs and the labor and non-labor income of households in January 2024," the authors conclude.