Argentina’s poverty rate accelerated to a peak of 52.9 percent in the first half of 2024, the highest level in almost two decades, but at least two reports say the situation has since improved.
With inflation tumbling from a peak of a monthly 25.5 percent and wages recovering some of the lost ground, the number of poor people had been reduced to as low as 36.8 percent by the end of the second half of last year, according to some private estimates.
Nevertheless, specialists warn of an “aggravation” of scarcity in low-income sectors and the risks of “structural poverty.”
The data stem from the rigourous measurements by th economist and Universidad Torcuato Di Tella (UTDT) lecturer Martín González-Rozada. The specialist estimated December’s Total Basic Shopping-Basket, calculating a reduction of poverty by 16.1 percentage points from its peak.
The study is updated every month, based on the projection of the structure of the job market and the data on total family earnings from the EPH (Encuesta Permanente de Hogares) household survey of the INDEC statistics bureau corresponding to the half-year in question while contrasting the total family earning with the average Basic Shopping-Basket projections for the same period.
González-Rozada projected a basic shopping-basket of 313,360 pesos per adult equivalent to the second half of last year for an interannual increase of 178.7 percent while the projection of total family earnings yielded an interannual increase of 207.1 percent.
Proceeding from this statistical information and the simulation of the EPH microdata for the last two quarters of last year, the poverty rate was projected. The expert noted that “the projected incidence can be mechanically broken down into a weighted average between a poverty rate of 38.8 percent for the third quarter of 2024 and 34.8 percent for the fourth.”
"This projection suggests that around 37 percent of people live in poor urban households. The EPH is a representative survey of an urban population estimated at 29.6 million people for the period in question, which implies around 11 million living in poor urban households," explains the report.
This situation propitiated a fall in the calculations of poverty and destitution for the last six months of last year, descending to 36.8 and 9.2 percent respectively with the number of destitute almost halved.
Work by the CNCPS (Consejo Nacional de Coordinación de Políticas Sociales) in tandem with the Human Capital Ministry estimated poverty as declining to 38.9 percent in the third quarter of 2024. This analysis is based on the INDEC report on income distribution.
The CNCPS prognosis of destitution was 8.6 percent after having registered 20.2 percent in the first quarter and 16 percent in the second. If corroborated, this would be a steeper drop than that calculated by the UTDT’s Nowcast.
Beyond the prívate estimates based on official data, INDEC will be issuing the definitive number for the second half of last year in mid-March. These figures are published every six months in the 3rd and 9th months of the year (March and September).
Meanwhile the ODSA (Observatorio de la Deuda Social Argentina) poverty watchdog of the UCA Catholic University voiced that although the projected indices had reached similar levels to the previous year for the third quarter of 2024, the consumer capacity of households was reduced by the higher costs of basic services such as electricity, water, gas and transport, among others.
Unlike the line traced by the total shopping-basket, the measurement of multidimensional poverty does not only focus on family earnings but also the lack of access to basic sources of welfare in from one to six dimensions.
"The current panorama shows an aggravation of the situation in this sense - multidimensional poverty (measured as income plus one lack) increased inter-annually from 39.8 to 41.6 percent and within that figure structural poverty (three wants or more) also rose from 22.4 to 23.9 percent," they alerted.
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