MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

A third of Argentina's population is poor

Almost 34% of Argentina's urban population was described as poor at the end of 2005, with a 6.4 points drop on a year to year basis, according to the latest numbers from the official Census and Statistics Office.

The north of the country has the most depressing figures and in the opposite extreme are the City of Buenos Aires and Patagonia.

In practical terms this means that 7.9 million Argentines as the end of last December could not satisfy their minimum food, health, housing, education, transport and other basic service needs. Furthermore 12.2% of the population, 2.8 million is considered indigent which means they can't even feed adequately.

A family of four members was considered poor in Argentina at the end of 2005, when their income was below the equivalent of 269 US dollars per month, and indigent when that income was below 125 US dollars monthly.

However, poverty in Argentina has steadily diminished since the extreme 57.7% registered in October 2002, the peak of the latest financial crisis when the Argentine economy virtually melted, the banking system cracked and among other things the country defaulted on its foreign debt.

The twice a year release takes into account the 28 most populated urban conglomerates of Argentina. This is equivalent to 70% of total population, or 24.1 out of 36 million inhabitants.

Argentina's northeast region is the most stricken with a poverty rate of 54% and 22.7% indigence. In this region the worst city is Corrientes, capital of the province of Corrientes, with 56.1% poverty.

The region with lesser percentage of exclusion is Patagonia which records 21.5% poor people, followed by the Pampas with 30.7% and the city of Buenos Aires, 11.5%.