Argentina's poverty rate rose to 32.3% of people in 31 surveyed urban areas in the first half of 2026, INDEC reported on September 24. It was 28.2% in the second half of 2025, an increase of 4.1 percentage points. The reading reversed part of a long decline from the extreme hardship recorded early in Javier Milei's presidency. It also challenged the idea that lower inflation alone could guarantee continued social improvement before the next presidential election.
What the survey measures
INDEC's figures cover 31 urban agglomerations, not a census of every person in Argentina. The institute's public summary said 24.4% of households were below the poverty line in the first half of 2026, with 32.3% of people living in those households. It put indigence at 5.6% of households and 7.5% of people, the latter up from 6.3% in the preceding half-year according to Al Jazeera. Distinguishing people from households, and poverty from the more severe food-based indigence measure, prevents one percentage from being misread as another.
The rise followed a substantial improvement from the first half of 2024, when poverty reached nearly 53%, according to Al Jazeera's account of INDEC data. Lower inflation had been part of the reason the earlier rate receded. Yet the latest figures suggested the easier gains from stabilization could be fading. Al Jazeera reported that per-person household income rose 11.5% in the first six months of 2026 while the cost of necessities used for the poverty threshold rose nearly 20%. When that cost outpaces incomes, fewer families can clear the statistical line even if the overall consumer-price rate is far below previous peaks.
Social strain behind the percentage
Unemployment reached 7.9% in the second quarter of 2026, INDEC's labor figures showed. Reuters described crowded soup kitchens, revived barter clubs and households borrowing short term for groceries. Those observations give texture to the statistic without implying that every household below the line has identical circumstances. Aid workers and social organizations reported greater strain; economists cited by Reuters argued that continued poverty reduction would increasingly depend on job creation and real wage growth. The rate's increase did not erase the previous drop, but it did make the recovery less secure.
An estimate from the Catholic University of Argentina suggested poverty could reach 35% by the end of 2026, according to Reuters and Al Jazeera. That was a forecast, not another official INDEC observation. A September AtlasIntel survey reported by Reuters showed sharply higher disapproval of Milei among lower-income respondents, offering a possible political consequence rather than proof that the poverty rate alone caused the shift. The next presidential election was expected in 2027, giving both the administration and its opponents an incentive to argue over what the social figures meant.
The government's inflation achievements and the renewed poverty increase can both be true. The first describes slower price growth; the second shows the relationship between incomes and the cost of basic needs. The immediate test after the release was whether employment and pay would strengthen enough for families to regain ground before the next poverty survey, rather than whether a lower CPI number by itself could settle the question.
