The director of the Argentine Social Debt Observatory (ODSA-UCA), Agustín Salvia, warned this Sunday that “it’s to be expected that they get worse” the poverty levels that were disseminated in the last report, which detailed that in January 57.% of Argentines were in poverty.
“Structural poverty in Argentina is not new and it is expected that it will worsen, as well as that February will be more complicated” Salvia said this Sunday, in statements he made in an interview with the channel All News (TN).
A study published this Saturday by the UCA Social Observatory indicated that poverty reached 57.4% of Argentines in January (close to 27 million people), a measurement that President Javier Milei considered in a message on his social networks. as “the true inheritance of the caste model,” as he wrote this Saturday night on his personal account on the social network X.
“The situation is complicated and serious, it is not a new phenomenon, but rather it is a problem that has been accumulating”Salvia admitted about the result of the UCA measurement, which is used as a common parameter in issues of poverty and indigence.
In this regard, Salvia detailed that he indicated that indigence reached 15% of Argentines last January (about 7 million people), while poverty exceeded 57%, numbers that marked a significant increase compared to the figures at the end of 2023, when they were estimated at 14% and 49%, respectively.
The measurement by the UCA Observatory highlighted that poverty is at the highest level in the last 22 years: in 2002 it had reached 54%.
Salvia stressed that the processes that lead to such deterioration are long-term consequences, but he also pointed out that the dramatic social situation that Javier Milei’s administration received saw the indices worsen in January by “a constant process of inflation, the beginning of an economic recession and because there were no important salary adjustments.”
It is because of this picture that he estimated that possibly “February is more complicated” and emphasized that every day they add “new middle classes that fall into poverty.”
“EIn the last 20 years, the statistic that 30% of Argentines were poor was generally maintained, but the current process is the most serious in more than 20 years,” said Salvia.
That dramatic percentage that the UCA measured in January, and that it fears will worsen, “it will be very difficult to reduce it in the short term”although he estimated that a figure similar to the increase in January “if it could go down if inflation is in single digits and macroeconomic stability, development and productive investments are achieved,” which are the objectives that Milei mentions as he says that “we still have to go through March and April as the hardest months.”
TE/HB