Argentine society accumulates several decades of failed policies in terms of sustained growth and income distribution, which is why the country's economy does not guarantee stable and prolonged growth in a sustainable manner.
In this framework, the poverty rate is the tip of an iceberg with multiple, enormous and dangerous consequences, in both social and political matters.
Not only the daily life agenda of millions of families is affected by its implications, but also the political preferences of citizens affected by poverty;
In general, they are more likely to assess their particular situation regarding social well-being than any other consideration in terms of political-ideological narrative.
According to INDEC data during the second semester of 2022, poverty rose to 39.2% and, within it, indigence would have experienced almost no significant changes, affecting 8.1% of the population.
To a large extent, these data are not surprising if we consider the inflationary regime that affects the economy and has a negative impact on household income;
although it should be noted that the situation could be even worse if economic growth had not taken place during 2022 with an increase in the aggregate demand for jobs, both formal and informal, as well as social assistance programs.
In this regard, it should be noted that in reality 39.2% and 8.1% constitute the average of two quarters.
In the third quarter of 2022, poverty was 37.8% and indigence 7.8%, while in the fourth quarter, poverty climbed to 40.6% and indigence to 8.4%.
The dynamic is accelerating in terms of gradually producing a phenomenon of staggering, of increasing poverty, now in a context not only of inflation, but also of stagnation and a fall in the demand for employment.
There is not only a growing loss in the real value of wages, but also fewer economic and fiscal opportunities for households to compensate for this drop with more work efforts or social policies.
For this reason, the forecasts for this first semester of 2023 allow us to infer that poverty levels will continue to be above 40%;
with the only hope that the macroeconomic imbalances do not explode, given that otherwise poverty could comfortably exceed 50%, replicating the 2001-2002 crisis.
But who falls into poverty?
They are the lower middle classes of workers in small businesses, small merchants, non-professional self-employed workers, who experience the impossibility of adjusting prices and/or salaries around inflation, and who, at the same time, experience a drop in their level of activity. .
In other words, it is sectors of the lower middle class that have come to form a new layer of the new poor in a society where chronic poverty has become a structural and persistent phenomenon.
A process that is not new, but has become the most representative sign of contemporary Argentine society: a polarized, fragmented society, with very low levels of cohesion and social integration.
Our crises are more recurrent, deep, and prolonged than among our neighbors, and their rebounds are less in quantity and duration than what was achieved by the rest of the countries.
With each of the new crises, poverty rates increase, while, with each recovery period, the starting point is not recovered.
The result is evident: cycle after cycle, Argentine society has been accumulating structural, chronic, and persistent poverty, with growing inequality gaps that inhibit growth and put up barriers to social and political agreements.
The problem of poverty has been and continues to be the lack of balanced growth and a redistributive policy based on the development of productive capacities in the most backward sectors.
For this, it is essential, not a shower of large investments, although obviously desirable, but the multiplication of small, medium and large investments based on national savings, aimed at expanding the endowment of both productive and human capital and the creation of new jobs. job.
Our poor growth has been based mainly on consumption and not on investment.
The financing of subsidized consumption brings with it continuous fiscal imbalances or cycles of internal or external indebtedness without economic capacities to cover such debts.
All of which ends up leading to more inflation, monetary instability, less investment, greater labor informality and an increase in poverty and social inequality.
In this sense, the current poverty data not only express the end of the post-pandemic recovery cycle, but also -in our opinion- the end of a longer-term historical cycle of failures, founded on "malpractice" on the part of of the economic, social and political leaderships, on both sides of the ideological crack.
During the last fifty years, including our forty years of democracy, each government has left lower rates of investment, productivity, full employment, wages, and, therefore, a higher floor of chronic or structural poverty, with greater social assistance, in order to maintain at least social peace.
Director of the Observatory of the Argentine Social Debt of the UCA (ODSA-UCA). UBA-CONICET researcher.
look also
How to reverse social and political poverty
The real crack is social