Argentine poverty rate climbs, in setback for Milei

BEUNOS AIRES

Argentina's poverty rate increased to 32.3 percent in the first half of 2026, partly erasing gains made under President Javier Milei as incomes fail to keep step with rising prices, official statistics showed.

The rate grew 4.1 points compared to the last half of 2025, the national statistics agency Indec said on Sept. 24.

The rate of extreme poverty also shot up from 6.3 percent to 7.5 percent.

Children were the worst hit, with 44.5 percent of Argentines aged 14 years and younger classified as poor, and 10.8 percent as extremely poor.

The figures deal a setback to Milei, a free-market radical, who nearly halved the poverty rate during the first two years of his mandate, mainly by shrinking perennially high inflation.

From a high of 52.9 percent in the first half of 2024, following his more-than-50-percent devaluation of the peso, the rate fell to 28.2 percent in the second half of 2025.

This year's increase coincided with a rebound in inflation at the start of the year before a new decline to 1.7 percent in August, the lowest level in 14 months.

Economists say that, more than unemployment, poverty is being driven by the high rate of informal work.

"The biggest problem is job insecurity, not unemployment, because when families are deprived...they have to invent a job, which can be collecting waste, street vending, selling food at the train station," said Eduardo Donza, a researcher at the Social Debt Observatory of the Argentine Catholic University (UCA).

Milei claims that he has lifted 14 million people out of poverty -- an estimate based on the fall in poverty from the peak it hit after he became president.