Poverty

Poverty, particularly absolute poverty, is less evident in Argentina than in the continent as a whole; absolute poverty affected 3.7% of the Argentine population (around a third of that in the remainder of South America), per the UN Human Development Report in 2009, and income poverty affected 13.2% of the population in the same period.

The relatively low poverty rate is shared with the country’s neighbors to the west and east, Chile and Uruguay; but contrasts with most of Argentina’s northern neighbors (Bolivia, Paraguay, and Peru), and has resulted in a wave of immigration from these latter to Argentina since the 1960s, mainly to Buenos Aires and its environs.

Poverty rates, measured by Argentine parameters, are higher than those reported by the UN, however. “Structural poverty”, based on substandard housing, affected 17.7% of the population as of the 2001 Census. Income poverty is also higher, and unlike structural poverty (which has gradually declined over the decades), has varied sharply between Argentina’s economic cycles.

This proportion rose sharply, for instance, during the 1989 currency crisis (from 26% to 47%), while the early success of the Convertibility Plan cut the rate to 16% by 1994; income poverty rose again in the ensuing years, to 35% by 2001, and reached 54% during the depths of the crisis in 2002.

The incidence of income poverty declined markedly during the subsequent economic recovery, and as of the end of 2009, reached 9.0% of households and 13.2% of the population. Income poverty, as of the first half of 2010, officially includes adults living with a monthly disposable income of around 370 Argentine pesos (US$ 95) per person, and children for whom monthly expenditures total no more than around 200 pesos (US$ 51) each; a family of two adults and two children were considered poor in early 2010 if their monthly family expenditures were less than around 1,140 pesos (US$ 292).

Critics of the official INDEC survey charge that both the inflation rate used to measure poverty and the official baseline household budgets themselves are understated, however. The official income poverty line increased 150% between 2001 and early 2010; but most private surveys of household conditions in Argentina estimate it at half again as much as the official threshold, and the effective poverty rate at around 30% of the population. Absolute poverty estimates, as measured by the inability to meet a minimum nutritional budget, also differ: this condition includes 3.5% of the population officially, and around 10% per private estimates.

Poverty in Argentina varies widely according to region, and provinces in the north have historically shouldered the nation’s highest poverty rates. Estimates of income poverty in this region ranged from around 20% officially to over 40% in private estimates; substandard living conditions affected around 30% of this region’s population in the 2001 Census.

The city of Buenos Aires proper, Santa Cruz and Tierra del Fuego Provinces typically benefit from the nation’s lowest poverty rates (around 7 to 14%, depending on the measurement). Buenos Aires, in particular, has been increasingly blighted by shantytowns, however, as it continues to be a magnet for the impoverished from both northern Argentina and neighboring countries to the north.

The majority of Argentina’s public social programs, aside from those related to health, are administered by the National Social Security Administration (ANSES). Argentines in the labor force earning less than 4,800 pesos (US$1,230) monthly, are entitled to benefits upon marriage, birth or adoption of a child, for maternity leave or prenatal care, and for a disability in a child, as well as to a modest unemployment insurance benefit for up to 6 months.

The most important poverty relief program administered by the ANSES is the Universal Childhood Entitlement. The benefit, of 180 pesos (US$ 46) a month per child, is assigned to 3.7 million children under age 18 (30% of the nation’s total), and includes the deposit of 20% of the check in a savings account accessible only upon certification of the child’s enrollment in school.

The health needs of the poor in Argentina (and of a sizable proportion of the working class) is attended to by the public hospital system, which received funding of around US$8 billion in 2009, and whose quality of care typically falls short of the systems relied on by the nation’s middle and upper classes (health cooperatives and private health insurance); health care for poor (and most non-poor) senior citizens is overseen by PAMI.

The National Housing Fund (FONAVI) and its successors, the Provincial Housing Institutes, have also benefited the poor by facilitating access to affordable housing, and since 1976, has completed over a million housing units.

The socio-economic crisis at the time prompted the enactment of the Program for Unemployed Heads of Households in early 2002, and at its height in 2003, around 2 million beneficiaries received debit cards worth 150 pesos (US$ 50) for part-time work; by 2010, the plan’s impact on employment had become negligible.

Birth control among the poor, especially access to contraceptives, has long been discouraged by a succession of Argentine governments, as well as by figures in the influential Roman Catholic Church.

Government policy instead rewards large families with subsidies that rise disproportionately with the seventh child, and though Argentine women have long had among Latin America’s lowest birth rates (averaging 2.3 births per woman in recent years), the policy has tended to encourage higher birth rates in the lowest strata of society (including women least able to afford large families).

See also: Income Inequality in Argentina

Racism

In Argentina, as others countries with high levels of multiculturalism and immigration destination place, there has been discrimination based on ethnic characteristics or national origin. In turn, racial discrimination tends to be closely related to discriminatory behavior for socio-economic and political reasons.

Given that trait of Argentine Society, one of the more active institutions against discrimination in the south hemisphere has been established, the National Institute Against Discrimination, Xenophobia and Racism. The INADI (Instituto Nacional contra la Discriminación, la Xenofobia y el Racismo) was created in 1995 by Federal Law 24515. The Institute placed Argentina in the foreground of the fight against racism and discrimination.

Different terms and behaviors have spread to discriminate against certain portions of the population, in particular against those who are referred to as “negros”, a group that is not particularly well-defined in Argentina, but which is associated, although not exclusively, with people of dark skin or hair; members of the working class or lower class; the poor; and more recently with crime. Is also confusing the fact that words like “negro”, “gallego”, “bolita”, “indio” or “ruso” also are utilised as affectionate nicknames.

Other racist, xenophobic, and spiteful terms and attitudes have developed against immigrants. Historically, “gallego” (Galician) for the Spanish people in general, tano, an apocope of napolitano (Napoletani, from Naples) for the Italians and “ruso” (Russian) for Jewish immigrants were terms that carried pejorative connotations.

These have to some extent carried over to the present, the former as jokes about Galicians and the latter as anti-Semitic insults. Today, words such as “bolita”, “paragua”, and “boliguayo” constitute derogatory terms to refer to certain immigrants of Latin American origin, mostly from neighbouring countries like Bolivia and Paraguay. An older xenophobic slur was the use of the name godos for the Spaniards or royalists during the Argentine War of Independence.

Anti-Semitism also exists in Argentina, in a context influenced by the large population of Jewish immigrants and a relatively high level of intermarriage between these immigrants and other communities.

In many cases, “social relations have become racialized”; for example the term “negro” is used to designate a worker, without any relation to the color of his skin. It is common for people who hold positions of responsibility in business to refer to the staff as “negros”. In political circles as well it is common for certain groups to denigrate peronist sympathizers by referring to them as “negros”.

There is an active debate about the depth of racist conduct in Argentina. While some groups maintain that it is only a question of inoffensive or marginal behavior that is rejected by the vast majority of the population, other groups contend that racism is a widespread phenomena that manifests itself in many different ways.

Some groups also assert that racism in Argentina is no different from that which is present in any other country in the world, while other groups claim that Argentina’s brand of racism manifests itself in a number of unique ways that are related to the country’s history, culture, and the different ethnic groups that interact in the country.