Argentina’s poverty rate fell to 31.6 percent in the first of the year, according to the INDEC national statistics bureau – a drop of 6.5 points from the second half of 2024.
Extrapolated out to the wider population, the data means that more than 14 million Argentines – almost a third of the population – are now considered poor.
The proportion of households living below the poverty line stood at 24.1 percent, added the bureau, a drop of 4.5 points from the same period.
Within this group, 5.6 percent of households were classified as living in extreme poverty, encompassing 6.9 percent of the population – declines of 0.8 points and 1.3 points respectively.
The downward trend was observed across all regions of the country, according to INDEC’s report.
The news was greeted jubilantly by officials in President Javier Milei’s government, which hailed the improvement as a sign that the administration’s austerity measures are bearing fruit.
"Poverty continues to decline. Freedom advances or Argentina retreats. Long live freedom, damn it!!!" wrote Milei in a post on social media.
Presidential Spokesperson Manuel Adorni echoed the sentiment: "It wasn't by issuing currency, it wasn't by harassing the private sector, it wasn't by isolating ourselves from the world. Populism impoverishes, always," he wrote on his X account.
“Poverty continues to decline,” celebrated the Human Capital Ministry in a post on social media, noting the “strong interannual decline” in extreme poverty.
Experts said the drop was mostly down to a fierce fall in inflation. The Milei government managed to slow price hikes to almost 118 percent in 2024 and has maintained the downward trend in 2025. Prices increased 19.5 percent in the first eight months of this year.
INDEC’s report, based on 31 urban centres nationwide, provides a window into the inequality amongst Argentina’s population.
The bureau measures poverty and extreme poverty by a household’s ability to afford the basic food basket (CBA) and the overall basic basket (CBT).
The downward trend in indicators is directly linked to changes in the purchasing power of household incomes relative to the cost of the reference baskets. While the CBA increased by 13.2 percent and the CBT by 12.3 percent, household incomes rose by an average of 26.3 percent.
This discrepancy allowed both poverty and extreme poverty rates to decline relative to the previous measurement.
However, the gap between the income of poor households and the cost of purchasing the CBT remains unchanged. On average, these households earned around 671,492 pesos, while the cost of the CBT for that same group stood at 1,065,691 pesos.
Drilling down into the data by age, the data shows the worrying penetration of poverty among children and adolescents: 45.4 percent of those under the age of 14 live in households below the poverty line.
Among young people aged 15 to 29, the rate was 37 percent, while among adults aged 30 to 64 it reached 27.7 percent. For those aged 65 and over, the incidence dropped to 10.8 percent.
Geographically, the NEA (Northeast) and Cuyo regions recorded the highest poverty rates, 39 percent and 33.8 percent respectively. In contrast, Patagonia and the Pampas registered the lowest levels, with 27 percent and 30.5 percent.
When President Milei took office in December 2023, poverty affected 41.7 percent of the population. The indicator soared to 52.9 percent in the first half of 2024 following a steep devaluation of the currency and has fallen since then.
Extreme poverty has followed the same trajectory, affecting 11.9 percent in the second half of 2023 and rising to 18.1 percent in early 2024. In the second half of the same year, 8.2 percent of Argentines were considered destitute.
–TIMES/NA/PERFIL
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