Poverty among children and young people – under 17 years old — made a big jump during 2022: it went from 51.8% to 54.6%. There are 7 million boys, girls and adolescents who live in poor houses because they do not have the resources to pay for a basic food basket.
By age group, poverty rises to 56.5% between 6 and 11 years, 56.3% between 12 and 17 years and 49.5% between 0 and 5 years, according to INDEC data that 12.2% of poverty in these ages is because their families do not have sufficient income to feed themselves.
Both destitution and child and youth poverty are several points higher than the 8.1% average poverty and 39.2% of poverty nationwide.
Due to the sharp increase in basket values at the beginning of 2023, especially that of staple foods, It is assumed that these rates of destitution and poverty are already much higher to those of the second half of 2022.
Thus, of the more than 18 million poor nationwide, almost 40% are under 17 years old.
This leap in child and youth poverty has occurred even as employment increased but this happened in informal occupations with income that was well below the increase in core basket values and despite social aid, such as AUH (Universal Child Allowance), food card, whose values have risen below those of the poverty line. And which at the same time mark the limits of aid and social plans.
Augustine Wise, director of the Social Observatory of UCA (Argentine Catholic University), told Clarín that “without social programs, the first calculations show levels of poverty ranging between 25 and 30% and those of poverty would exceed 65% of the total of children and adolescents under 17 years of age.
This dimension of child and youth poverty has been dragging on for decades, worsening in 2018/2019, then with the deterioration of incomes due to the pandemic and the quarantine in 2020. And despite the recovery of activity in 2021 and 2022, it has returned to last year and it’s still at dramatic heights.
Thus, with the launch of the new INDEC series, in the second half of 2016 poverty among children under 14 (non-disaggregated measure up to 17 years) was 45.8% and jumped to 52.3% in the second half of 2019, with the previous government. Then in 2020 it rose to 57.7%, in 2021 it fell to 51.4% and last year it rose again to 54.2%.
This dimension of child poverty is a factor in the reproduction of poverty. Because the boy who is born and grows up deprived of food, home, health or education has a compromised future and so does the whole of society. And it demonstrates that decades ago, while parents thought that their children would have better living conditions than those of the same age, the opposite has been happening for years: children live in lower living conditions than their parents.
Furthermore, most of these children live in families supported by low-income formal workers, in precarious and informal jobs, underemployed and self-employed workers who also work in the informal sector, without social security coverage. All of this amplifies the persistence and dimension of poverty.
Although children under 17 stand out as having the highest proportion of poor people, poverty has also increased among other age groups. No age group could escape loss of income or social decline.
Source: Clarin
