The fact that poverty traps girls and boys is not only unacceptable from an ethical and moral perspective, but it is dangerous for society as a whole and for all those who make it up.
Not solving the problem, not eradicating childhood poverty, is equivalent to mortgaging the entire society.
The intergenerational transmission of poverty is a fact with a forceful load of empirical evidence, accumulated over years and with zero doctrinal or ideological disagreements.
Poverty is inherited;
Childhood poverty is a common enemy and its eradication, seen from the positive side, is a benefit for the community as a whole.
Adverse early environments created by situations of deprivation and deprivation threaten the full development of individual capabilities, which in the long term translates into poor productivity, low income, increases in compensatory social investment in education, health and social protection, and low growth. economic and growing poverty.
Therefore, eradicating childhood poverty is the most effective way to break the link that connects current poverty with future poverty.
Argentina closed the year 2023 with more than 3.2 million girls and boys living in homes where the only deprivation is income;
with 1.5 million with at least one non-monetary deprivation of the six that the available data allows us to quantify;
and with almost 3.9 million deprived monetarily and non-monetarily at the same time.
This occurs in a society whose population of girls and boys decreases year by year.
It is a mistake to think that there are many poor girls and boys because the population of this age group is large and growing.
There are many poor girls and boys because the prevalence of poverty is high: putting all dimensions together, in 2023 it affected almost 70% of girls and boys.
Each measurement can be compared to snapshots that correspond to periods: quarters, semesters, years.
Sometimes this methodological need makes us lose sight of the dynamic nature of the issue;
the passage of girls and boys through life.
They are born with nothing, grow up with nothing and reproduce their situation of violation day after day throughout their lives.
There is a sentence, a penalty that they receive for the mere fact of being born into a poor home.
In the midst of this fierce situation of unjust inequality there is good news.
Poverty in childhood can be eliminated with the resources that contemporary societies such as Argentina currently have.
The results of recent research carried out by UNICEF Argentina show that correctly allocated income transfers can protect hundreds of thousands of girls and boys in situations of social vulnerability.
More specifically, it is estimated that extreme poverty would be almost 10 percentage points higher if it were not for this social policy.
If we look further, we can see that the non-monetary dimensions of poverty decreased over the years: housing and public health conditions, school attendance and infant mortality improved.
Rescuing these achievements in favor of the well-being of girls and boys allows us to highlight what could be achieved with a more emphatic effort in these areas.
A small push in this sense would imply enormous benefits for society as a whole;
benefits that would extend over the years and whose current value is equally superlative.
Jorge Paz is a researcher at IELDE, National University of Salta