Last year ended with a poverty of 45.3%: there are 20.5 million poor

Ismael Bermudez

05/14/2021 7:58 PM

• Clarín.com

• Economy

Updated 05/14/2021 7:59 PM

New INDEC records show that 2020 ended with poverty of 45.3%.

It is that the official Institute of Statistics had reported that in the second half of 2020 poverty had reached 42% of the population.

But now it has been confirmed, based on the dissemination by INDEC of the micro-data from the Permanent Household Survey (EPH) for the fourth quarter of last year that this poverty level was 38.7% between July-September and of the

45.3% from October to December.

Thus, projected to the entire country, last year, it ended with

20,500,000 poor people

, a million and a half poor more than the previous figure of 42%.

While

child poverty

(under 14 years of age) was 57.7% in the second semester of 2020, it is broken down into 52.5% in the third quarter and

62.9% - 6,800,000 - in the end of 2020.

The strong difference between poverty in the third and fourth quarters of the year is explained because in the last months of 2020

inflation accelerated with the fall in the purchasing power of a large part of the population

, the Government

discontinued the IFE

that reached 9 million people and also for seasonal reasons the official measurement does not compute the average bonus.

Last year, with 47%, the highest level of poverty was registered in the second quarter - the hardest months of the quarantine - when activity and income for a large part of the population collapsed.

It is discounted that, although there is more activity and specific aid to vulnerable sectors,

due to the new rise in food prices and the fall in real terms of wages and pensions, this level of poverty would not be reduced

and could even increase for the resurgence of the pandemic and new restrictions on movement and activity.

The figures for the first half of 2021 will be released by INDEC only in September.

The specialist

Martin Rozada

says "it is difficult for poverty to fall below 40% in 2021." With the first quarter of 2021 over, the first estimates indicate that the poverty rate for the semester October 2020 to March 2021 will be around 44 This 44% is made up of a poverty rate of 45.3% from the last quarter of last year and 43% for the first quarter of 2021, due to the incidence of the collection of the half bonus in the measurement of the EPH ".

Rozada adds that "for the second quarter of 2021

a higher poverty rate is expected than

that of the first quarter only because the bonus is not captured and this is without taking into account the new restrictions imposed on the economy. For this reason , the expectation is not very encouraging for the first semester of the year that could end with a poverty rate above 44% ”.

From the processing of the INDEC microdata, it appears that beyond the unemployed, due to low wages and real income, a third of the employed are poor.

At the top of the list of the employed poor are

47.8% of unregistered wage earners

.

It is followed by 40.9% of the self-employed - a sector with high levels of informality.

And 21.1% of formal employees or those registered with Social Security.

Thus, with a low-paid formal job, the worker and his family earn insufficient income.

In the Buenos Aires suburbs, 51% (6,353,000 people) in the second half of 2020, decomposed into 48% in the third quarter and 54% in the fourth (6,727,000).

There are 374,000 more poor people.

By age range, if poverty stands out among those under 14 years of age with 62.9%, among adolescents and young people between 15 and 29 years of age it reaches 51.7%.

This sector of the population has the highest unemployment rates, especially among women.

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