MercoPress. South Atlantic News Agency

Uruguayans see security as top national concern, cost of living as main personal problem

The divergence is emerging at a time when Uruguay’s annual inflation rate stands at 3.11%, its lowest level in decades. Photo: Sebastian Astorga

Uruguayans continue to identify security and crime as the country’s main problem, but when the question shifts to everyday life, the dominant concern becomes the cost of living, according to a new survey by University of the Republic academics analysed in a report by El Observador. The poll also found that about one-third of respondents believe such problems stem from “longer inheritances” or broader trends that no government has managed to solve.

The contrast points to a gap between how people view the country and how they experience their own households. At the national level, insecurity draws the most mentions across all political camps, although with different intensity: 62% among voters of the Republican Coalition and 33% among Broad Front supporters. But when respondents are asked about their main personal problem, the cost of living moves clearly into first place, alongside other economic worries such as wages.

Nicolás Schmidt, a coordinator at Udelar’s Methods and Data Access Unit, told El Observador that the pattern matches a classic distinction in public-opinion research. When people assess the country, he said, they tend to identify broader social-order issues such as crime; when asked about their own lives, they organise their answers around household material conditions such as living costs.

The divergence is emerging at a time when Uruguay’s annual inflation rate stands at 3.11%, its lowest level in decades, according to the National Statistics Institute. That helps explain an apparent paradox: lower inflation does not necessarily translate into a widespread sense of relief in day-to-day spending.

On that point, economist Gabriela Mordecki told the newspaper that inflation is not the same thing as the level of prices, a distinction that helps explain why perceptions of high living costs can persist even while consumer-price growth slows. The report adds that some goods and services remain relatively expensive in Uruguay compared with other countries in the region, and that perceptions also depend on household income and spending expectations.

The survey was based on 4,868 volunteers interviewed between Feb. 27 and March 2, 2026. According to the methodology published by El Observador and Udelar, it forms part of a public-opinion monitoring project using non-probability surveys processed through alternative inference models.

Beyond the inflation slowdown, the findings suggest that Uruguayan politics is dealing with two separate layers of discontent: one tied to public order and another to material well-being. In the public debate, security dominates; in daily life, the cost of living weighs more heavily.