In the first half of the year, Argentina’s poverty rate increased to nearly 53%, according to official data released on Thursday. This is the first concrete indication of the devastating effects of the strict austerity measures implemented by libertarian President Javier Milei.
The percentage more than doubled from 26% just seven years ago and represented a sharp increase from 41.7 percent at the end of the previous year, highlighting the terrible toll that the country’s ongoing economic crises have taken on average.
Milei’s spending cuts, intended to reverse a significant fiscal deficit, have resulted in significant short-term suffering, as demonstrated by the data. There are indications that things are getting better, but the nation is still in a severe recession with triple-digit inflation.
“Since this government came to power, jobs have dropped away,” lamented 53-year-old Buenos Aires resident Irma Casal, who works three shifts as a bricklayer, cardboard collector, and garbage recycler but still finds it difficult to go by.
“We work twice as hard for less, and we have to keep going.”
Although markets and investors applauded Milei’s spending cuts for helping the state’s finances recover from years of deficits, they have also caused the nation to enter a recession despite indications that the economy may be nearing its bottom.
According to the Catholic University of Argentina (UCA) observatory, the poverty rate increased to 55.5 percent in the first quarter of this year and then decreased to 49.4 percent in the second, an average of 52 percent for the first half of the year.
The director of the UCA Observatory, Agustin Salvia, stated that Milei’s policies had a major effect at the beginning of the year. But recently, he added, there had been indications of improvement.
“The entire narrative indicates a decline in the first quarter. Since then, the situation has begun to improve,” he stated.
The Argentine government claims that while it has expanded two important welfare programs, the Universal Child Allowance and a Food Card program, providing direct support to families, it has also cut back on support for soup kitchens and other social programs.
At a daily news conference on Thursday, presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni declared, “Any level of poverty is horrendous,” attributing Milei’s current struggles to the economic “bombs” that former administrations’ poor management left behind.
“We are doing everything so that this situation changes.”
