Argentina's poverty rate rises to nearly one in three under Milei
Argentina's poverty rate climbed to 32.3 percent in the first half of 2026, partly reversing gains made under President Javier Milei as wages fail to keep pace with prices. Children were hit hardest, with nearly half now classified as poor.
Argentina's national statistics agency Indec reported Thursday that the country's poverty rate rose to 32.3 percent in the first half of 2026, up 4.1 percentage points from the second half of 2025. Extreme poverty also climbed, from 6.3 to 7.5 percent.
Children bore the brunt of the increase: 44.5 percent of Argentines aged 14 and under are now classified as poor, with 10.8 percent in extreme poverty. Indec defines the poor as adults unable to afford a basic basket of goods and services worth roughly $340, while those unable to afford a food-only basket worth about $150 are considered extremely poor.
A setback for Milei
The figures represent a setback for President Javier Milei, a free-market radical who had nearly halved the poverty rate during his first two years in office, largely by taming chronically high inflation. Since Milei took power promising to revive the economy through austerity and deregulation, the poverty rate has swung sharply — from a peak of 52.9 percent in the first half of 2024, following a devaluation of the peso by more than 50 percent, down to 28.2 percent in the second half of 2025.
This year's rise coincided with a rebound in inflation early in the year, before it eased to 1.7 percent in August, its lowest level in 14 months.
Job insecurity blamed
Eduardo Donza, a researcher at the Social Debt Observatory of the Argentine Catholic University, pointed to job insecurity as the main driver of poverty. The manufacturing and retail sectors have shed jobs amid falling purchasing power and a surge in imports following Milei's opening of the economy to foreign competition. Around 30,000 companies have closed since he took office, and unemployment reached 7.9 percent in the second quarter of this year, the highest since 2021.
Donza said informal work, more than unemployment itself, is driving poverty, as families without steady income turn to activities like waste collection or street vending to get by. Milei maintains that 14 million people have been lifted out of poverty during his presidency, based on the decline from the peak reached shortly after he took office.
