According to the study by the Catholic University of Argentina (UCA), the poverty rate soared to 57.4 per cent of Argentina’s 46-million population in January.
The study findings sparked accusations between former Argentine Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and the government of President Javier Milei, who announced a series of shock measures aimed at overcoming the country’s severe crisis immediately after coming to power.
According to the study, some 27 million people in Argentina live in poverty, with 15 per cent of them mired in “destitution,” meaning they cannot properly cover their food needs.
The UCA’s social debt observatory is considered an independent and prestigious research centre whose poverty reports cover a wider geographical area than those of Argentina’s national statistical agency INDEC.
According to the centre’s latest report, the rise in the poverty rate in January was partly due to the devaluation of the Argentine peso carried out by the Milei government shortly after taking power on December 10. The study concluded that the biggest effect was felt by working- or middle-class households that did not benefit from social programmes.
Eduardo Donza of the social debt observatory reported that rising prices would continue to affect Argentines, with poverty hitting at least 60 per cent of the population in March. At the same time, Milei stated that his government “would give its life” to bring about a change in Argentina’s socio-economic reality.
Former Vice President Fernández de Kirchner attributed the poverty problem largely to the policies of conservative President Mauricio Macri and the adjustments made by the current administration.
She stated that since 2018, “with a debt in dollars and the return of the IMF (…), we went backwards.” The government responded to Fernández de Kirchner requesting her to “be silent.”
In February, presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni declared that the former president was “one of the most relevant figures in the last 20 years of Argentina’s decline.”
