More than half of Argentines now live in poverty, according to data released Tuesday, with levels rising non-stop since a year ago and quickening since budget-slashing president Javier Milei took office.
The Pontifical Catholic University鈥檚 Social Debt Monitor put the figure at 55.5 per cent for the first quarter of this year 鈥� up from 44.7 in the third quarter of 2023 and 49.5 per cent in December, when Milei was sworn in.
Some 17.5 per cent of the country鈥檚 46 million people were indigent, according to the figures 鈥� nearly double the rate in the third quarter of last year.
The poverty level in Argentina is defined as a monthly income of less than the $292 required to buy a basic basket of consumer goods for an adult, or $904 for a family with two children.
An adult making less than $132 for an adult is considered to live in extreme poverty, or indigence.
The new figures are worse than recent ones from the Indec national statistics agency, which put the poverty rate at 41.7 per cent at the end of 2023.
That was up from 39.2 per cent a year earlier.
Indec releases poverty data only twice a year, and its latest report is from before Milei鈥檚 sharp devaluation of the peso mid-December and the rapid inflation that followed.
All economic indicators are pointing to a crushing impact on the population of Milei鈥檚 austerity measures, with falling employment and consumer rates on top of annual inflation exceeding 200 per cent.
In March, UNICEF said the extreme poverty rate among children in Argentina likely reached one in five by the end of 2023.
Milei鈥檚 government, meanwhile, had frozen the distribution of thousands of tons of food aid for months pending an audit of soup kitchens.
Last month, a court ordered the food to be released 鈥榠mmediately鈥� and an emergency distribution drive was organised this week, with the help of the military.
