Poverty in Argentina rises eight points in January and reaches almost 60% of the population

Argentina is going through a serious social emergency: almost six out of every ten Argentines are poor, meaning they do not have enough income to buy the basic basket (which includes food, transportation, clothing and medicine).

The number skyrocketed at the start of Javier Milei's Government: it went from 49.5% in December to 57.4% in January, more than 3.5 million new poor, according to figures published over the weekend by the University Argentine Catholic (UCA).

They are the worst since the corralito crisis of 2002 and leave the latest official data, from the first half of 2023, very outdated, when poverty was 40.1%.

In total, there are about 27 million poor people in a country with 46 million inhabitants.

After more than two decades of an inflationary regime, impoverishment and increase in social programs, to which is added a new orthodox economic adjustment program, poverty continues to increase despite public assistance.

pic.twitter.com/BHVJOeR31i

— Argentine Social Debt Observatory (UCA) (@ODSAUCA) February 19, 2024

The explanation for the current deterioration is simple: household income is growing at a much slower rate than inflation and the gap is getting wider and wider.

In 2023, prices advanced by 211.4% and salaries by 152.7%.

In January, monthly inflation was 20.6% and year-on-year inflation jumped to 254.2%, the highest in the world, already ahead of Venezuela and Lebanon.

The situation is especially difficult when making a purchase.

The price of food has increased by 300% in the last 12 months and some basic supermarket products have a similar cost to Spain, such as milk (0.85 cents) or sliced ​​bread (2.1 dollars) among many others.

The minimum wage, on the other hand, is eight times lower: in Argentina it is 156,000 pesos (equivalent to about 155 dollars) while in Spain it amounts to 1,134 euros.

The food crisis has made scenes common in Buenos Aires that until months ago were sporadic, such as seeing people—sometimes children—inside garbage containers looking for food or materials to sell.

Those who go house to house asking for help and who go to free soup kitchens because they cannot afford to buy food have also multiplied.

One of them is the Comedor del Fondo, which operates on the corner of a plaza in Villa Ortúzar, a middle-class neighborhood in Buenos Aires.

The organization that manages it receives 30 rations from the local government to distribute to homeless people, but thanks to donations it usually has up to 70 hot plates of food.

“70 is not enough either.

We feed everyone who comes until it is finished,” says one of the coordinators of the space.

“We seek to support homeless people, but now workers whose salaries are not enough are also coming,” she adds.

The long table on the street with diners squeezing onto the benches catches the attention of a young man pushing a baby stroller across the street.

His name is Jesús Díaz, he is 27 years old and lives in La Carbonilla, a slum a couple of kilometers away.

Díaz walks through the neighborhoods near his home every day and rings all the doorbells asking the neighbors “if they have anything to give.”

Hanging from the stroller is a bag with a package of flour and another of rice, a stuffed animal and several items of women's and children's clothing.

“I go out to find it as best I can because I don't know if they are going to throw us out of the room we rent.

We already owe two months.

But if I don't get work and everything increases, I don't know how we are going to do it,” says Díaz.

This Argentine father of two children worked as a bricklayer without a contract, but he was fired in November and has not found a job since.

His family is now completely dependent on state aid, which barely covers food expenses, a reality that is growing rapidly.

According to the UCA, 15% of Argentina's population is homeless.

Milei denies any responsibility for the recent rise in poverty and blames it on the “inheritance of the caste model.”

After the dissemination of unofficial poverty data, the Argentine president warned that he will maintain the course set when he took office on December 10: “The destruction of the last 100 years has no parallel in the history of the West.

Politicians have to understand that the people voted for change and we are going to give our lives to carry it out;

"We did not come to play the mediocre game of politics, we came to change the country."

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