Poverty affected 28.1% of portenos in Q3 2024

Poverty affected 28.1 percent of porteños in the third quarter of 2024, the highest rate for that part of the year since 2015, according to City Hall.

Some 868,000 people were classified as poor, a rise of 70,000 from the third quarter of 2023, reported IDECBA, the Buenos Aires City government’s statistics bureau. Overall, 22.1 percent of households were below the poverty line. 

Extreme poverty affected 7.3 percent of households and 11 percent of individuals, equating to 341,000 people across the capital.

“Poverty, and particularly extreme poverty, reached the highest incidences since the series began in 2015 for a third quarter, alongside those of 2020 during the pandemic,” said IDECBA.

Drilling down the data by age, the statistics bureau reported that “42.6 percent of children and adolescents (0-17 years) live in households in poverty (283,000 individuals in that age group),” an increase from a year ago when it reached 41 percent, but a decrease from the 45.1 percent recorded in the second quarter of 2024.

The sectors most affected by poverty included households in the southern part of the city (35 percent) and those with children aged under 14 years old (35.6 percent). The report also noted that “households with elderly members in poverty stand at 16.7 percent, below the overall population rate.”

– TIMES/NA