Argentina’s poverty rate has surged to 53 percent under the austerity program imposed by the government of self-declared “anarcho-capitalist” president Javier Milei.
The figure, published by the national statistics agency INDEC, is up from the 41.7 percent in the second half of 2023.
15.7 million people now live in poverty in the country, and around 136,000 jobs have been wiped out since Milei took office.
Milei has touted ‘wins’ such as monthly inflation dropping to four percent in July, the lowest in two-and-a-half years, and Argentina posting its sixth consecutive monthly fiscal and financial surpluse in June.
But those successes have come at a high cost for the population.
“The government’s relentless austerity is battering working families and the elderly, deepening the crisis instead of generating solutions,” Victoria Tolosa Paz, a congresswoman for the Peronist bloc, posted on X after the poverty rate data was published.
Ahead of the data’s publication, Milei’s spokesperson Manuel Adorni defended the austerity program.
He insited that the measures had stopped Argentina from sliding into hyperinflation, adding: “They had left us on the cusp of becoming a country where practically all the residents are poor.”
The dismal poverty rate data were accompanied by slumping popularity ratings for Milei. The share of those with a positive view of the president dropped 7 percent between August and September to 40 percent, according to pollster Poliarquía.