With the official values of the total basic basket reported this Thursday by the INDEC, the urban poverty rate for April-May would be at 48.7%, lower than the 51.8% estimated for the first quarter of 2024, but higher than the 45.2% in December 2023 according to the calculations of Martín Gonzalez-Rozada, professor of the Department and Director of the Master’s Degree in Econometrics and researcher at the Universidad Di Tella.
For the December 2023-May 2024 semester the estimate is 49.7%, with a margin of between 48.2% and 51.2%.
“This projection suggests that around 50% of people live in poor urban households. The Permanent Household Survey (EPH) is representative of an urban population that in the reference semester was estimated at 29.3 million people, which implies that around 14.5 million live in poor urban households,” clarifies Rozada.
If the 49.7% were projected to the entire country (urban and rural), there would be 23 million poor people, lower (1.1 million) than at the start of 2024 but still around 2 million above the end of 2023.
Rozada’s estimates are usually confirmed, as he himself says, with “a very small margin of error” more or less in relation to the definitive numbers that are later reported by INDEC.
The measurement of poverty by income arises from comparing the income of individuals and families (labor and non-labor, including social assistance) with the cost of the poverty basket of each region.
“The average Total Basic Basket (CBT) of the Greater Buenos Aires (GBA) region for the reference semester was estimated at $228,502 per adult equivalent. This is a year-on-year increase of 283.2%. For the average total family income (ITF), an interannual increase of 207% was projected for the semester. With these data and the simulation of the microdata from the Permanent Household Survey (EPH) for the fourth quarter of 2023 and the first and second quarters of 2024, the poverty rate was projected,” explained Rozada.
The jump in the level of poverty in the first three months of the year was produced by the devaluation at the start of the new Government and the strong increase in the value of the basic basket (56%, above the 51.6% of average inflation ) between January and March, with the income of the working population, retirees, self-employed workers and small professionals far behind those percentages. In April the CBT rose 7.1% and in May 2.8%, below income but with more unemployment. .
Poverty measurement moving forward will depend on the variation in food prices, employment levels and labor income and non-labor of the population in relation to the values of the baskets.
On August 5, Indec will release poverty microdata for the first quarter and on September 26, the data for the first semester.
