Poverty rate in Greater Buenos Aires jumps from 22% to 35.5% during Macri's first 5 months in office

[forest444]

Data presented by the University of Buenos Aires reveals that income poverty in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area - home to one in three Argentines - rose from 22% in December 2015 to 35.5% in April 2016. The incidence of extreme poverty - those among the poor whose income can't cover basic nutritional needs - rose from 5.9% to 7.7%.

The study was conducted by the Gino Germani Institute and analyzed by the Center for Public Opinion and Social Studies (COPES) at the University of Buenos Aires School of Social Science. It surveyed 1,228 households in the City of Buenos Aires and twenty counties in surburban Buenos Aires (part of Buenos Aires Province).

The total number of poor by income, considering a metro area population of 13.8 million, was estimated to have risen from 3.0 million in December to 4.9 million in May - a 60% increase in five months. The 13.5-point increase in the poverty rate was similar to the 14.3-point jump recorded between September 2001 and April 2002; the 60% jump in the number of poor, in turn, was the sharpest since the currency collapse and hyperinflation crisis in 1989.

The report pointed to the rapid increase in food, utility, and public transport prices since the right-wing Mauricio Macri administration devalued the peso by 40% in December and made deep cuts to both utility subsidies and export taxes - thus incentivizing the agricultural sector to depress the domestic market and forcing rates and fares to rise by 300%.

Consistent with past trends, poverty in the suburban counties remained higher, and rose faster, than in the City of Buenos Aires. The twenty metro area counties surveyed saw income poverty rise from 23.8% in December 2015 to 38.2% in April 2016 - a 14.4-point increase. Buenos Aires proper, meanwhile, saw poverty rise by 9.2 points, from 16% to 25.2%.

The shift thus broke a trend throughout the Kirchner era in which the gap in poverty rates between Buenos Aires and its largely working-class suburbs had been steadily shrinking from 2003 to 2015 due to the economic recovery on one hand and the rapid growth of property values and rents in the City of Buenos Aires on other; indeed, poverty had fallen from 61% to 24% in the suburbs, but only from 21% to 16% in Buenos Aires proper as rents outstripped income gains.

Many of the "new" poor, as in past economic crises in Argentina, are people with temporary jobs (known locally as changas) and unskilled or semi-skilled employees. A latent risk for these households is the possibility of falling into chronic poverty if job opportunities and purchasing power, both of which have been severely affected in the last six months, do not quickly recover.

Poverty, the report warned, may ultimately rise to 34.9% of those in Buenos Aires proper - and 51.3% in the suburbs - if those who are not poor, but are at risk, continue to lose buying power and suffer layoffs. An estimated 155,000 Argentines have lost their jobs since Macri took office.

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[Judi Lynn]

1. This will take so much time to correct, won't it?

It's only been a few months, and Macri has been able to head Argentina right back to the ditch, right where it was when Nestor Kirchner was elected.

Ordinarily you could say it looks as if he's left no stone unturned in ripping the economy apart and handing it off to himself and his accomplices, but we know he'll be finding far more to do to deteriorate the well-being of Argentina before he's completed his criminal first year.

Have never seen anything like this.

Thank you, forest444.

(We all know if any leftist leader did this much damage to the well-being of the 1%, he would have been assassinated already.)

[forest444]

2. At least three years, if past experience is any indication. And voters are already fuming.

A couple of weeks ago, voters in Río Cuarto (a Pampas "heartland" city of the kind many economists thought would benefit from Macri's export tax cuts) went to the polls to elect a new mayor.

This was the administration's first electoral test since taking office, and Macri spared no expense in backing his candidate: he dispatched several cabinet members to make grand promises of federal funds for local public works worth at least 500 million pesos ($35 million), and Macri himself appeared in a last-minute campaign ad urging voters to support his guy. He was definitely all in.

The result? A city which had given his alliance 72% in the November elections, gave his candidate less than 33%.

In short, the message they sent to Macri's Opus Dei-controlled 'Let's Change' alliance is: let's change - pronto.

http://www.democraticunderground.com/110851177