MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Milei celebrates official figures showing a decline in poverty

“The drop in the number of poor people is more than ten million,” Milei noted

Argentine President Javier Milei Monday boasted his administration's achievement of lowering poverty from 52.9% in the first semester of 2024 to 38.1% by the end of the year, compared to 41.7% at the end of 2023. Indigence (extreme poverty) also decreased to 8.2% from higher levels earlier in the year, according to a report released Monday by the National Institute of Statistics and Census (Indec).

This decline was observed across households (28.6% poor) and individuals, with reductions of 13.9 and 14.8 percentage points in poverty and 7.2 and 9.9 points in indigence, respectively, since mid-2024. The drop is attributed to slowing inflation, economic activity growth, and social policies like the Universal Child Allowance. The survey also found that 6.4% of households were below the indigence line, with decreased poverty and indigence in all provinces.

Other estimates, such as those from the Catholic University's (UCA) Argentine Social Debt Observatory (ODSA) (38-39%) and the Torcuato Di Tella University (36.8% for July-December), would concur with Indec’s figures.

Milei claimed his economic reforms lifted over eight million people from poverty, criticized past policies, and promised to deepen these efforts. The President expressed his satisfaction with the data published by his Government. ”It is enjoyed by good Argentines and suffered by the econochantas (pseudoeconomists), the club of the serial devaluators, the miserable politicians and the ignorant journalists (from those who perceive themselves as the bien-pensant center -unassumed leftists- to the most stale left),“ he stressed.

”Poverty fell very sharply. The drop in inflation, the growth in the activity level, and the policies promoted by Human Capital Ministry have lifted more than eight million people out of poverty. If we consider the peak data, the drop in the number of poor people is more than ten million,” he further noted.

Meanwhile, the Economy Ministry highlighted the significant improvement from the first half of 2024, when indigence stood at 18.1%. Historically, the lowest rates since 2016 were in 2017 (25.7% poverty, 4.8% indigence).

“The projected incidence can be mechanically decomposed into a weighted average of a poverty rate of 38.8% for the third quarter of 2024 and 34.8% for the fourth quarter,” the Indec report mentioned.

According to last September's update on poverty's incidence, it stood at 52.9% in the first half of the year, thus affecting some 24.9 million people nationwide in an inflationary scenario where the purchasing power of wages fell significantly but began to recover ground as the monthly consumer price index slowed down, albeit without fully offsetting all losses.

Indigence and poverty are calculated by comparing household income with the values of the indigence and poverty baskets for each region of the country.

The food basket serves as the basis for setting the poverty rate. It includes foodstuffs such as meat, dairy products, fruits, and vegetables to cover the population's energy requirements according to age and sex.