More than half of the people covered by Argentina's urban poverty survey were poor in the first half of 2024, according to figures released by the national statistics agency INDEC on September 26. The rate reached 52.9%; the share living below the narrower extreme-poverty threshold was 18.1%. Both figures made clear the severity of the adjustment during Javier Milei's first six months in office, even as the government argued its measures were necessary to stop an inflationary crisis.
What the survey measured
INDEC's figures, as reported by the Buenos Aires Herald, showed poverty up 11.2 percentage points and extreme poverty up 6.2 points against the second half of 2023. The first-half measure is an average over that period, not a snapshot of every family's position on publication day in September. The survey concerns urban agglomerations, and the results are often discussed as national estimates; the distinction matters because rural households are not directly counted in the same way. The poverty line compares household income with the cost of a broad basic basket, while the extreme-poverty or indigence threshold uses a basic food basket.
Children suffered disproportionately: INDEC's reported poverty rate for those aged up to 14 was 66.1%, the Herald said. In Argentina's northeast it reached 62.9% across the population; in the northwest, 57%. These differences caution against imagining the social damage as limited to Buenos Aires, where the political debate and much of the financial sector are concentrated. The poverty series gave a regional and generational dimension to discussions that had often focused on bond prices, exchange rates and budget balances.
Milei inherited rapid inflation and a severe fiscal and currency problem. A sharp peso devaluation in December 2023 helped push up prices before monthly inflation began to ease. At the same time, spending restraint and recession weakened households' ability to keep up with the baskets used to determine poverty. Neither explanation turns the newly released number into a verdict on a single measure. It does establish that stabilisation and household welfare were moving on very different timelines.
The test for disinflation
The government's argument was that restoring the public finances and slowing price rises would eventually help low-income families most. Critics pointed to the immediate consequences for wages, pensioners and children while that future recovery remained uncertain. The Herald cited research from the Center of Argentine Political Economy linking food costs and employment pressures to worsening hardship. The Senate's pension increase, passed in August and vetoed by Milei, had already put the trade-off between fiscal objectives and basic incomes in front of Congress.
A lower monthly inflation rate would not by itself reduce poverty. It would mean that the cost of living rose less quickly, not that food, rent and utilities returned to earlier prices. Household incomes would need to gain ground against the cost of the basket. Observers therefore had reason to track subsequent INDEC poverty releases and the behaviour of real wages, employment and transfers, rather than infer a turnaround from the headline inflation series alone.
What happened next
INDEC's later estimate for the second half of 2024, released in 2025 and reported by the Herald, put the poverty rate at 38.1%, down 14.8 points from the first half; extreme poverty fell from 18.1% to 8.2%. That later improvement does not erase the first-half surge. Taken together, the readings show why any assessment of the adjustment needs both the shock and the subsequent recovery in the same frame.
