A Buenos Aires family with two children needed almost a million pesos to not be considered poor in September. In addition, To be middle class, that same family had to have, at a minimum, an income of more than a million and a half pesos.
This Wednesday the Institute of Statistics and Censuses of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires (CABA) reported that the cost of The Total Basic Basket (CBT), which measures the poverty line, rose 2.9% in the ninth month of the year to be located in the $993,854. For its part, the Basic Food Basket (CBA)which is used as the threshold of the indigence line, showed an advance of just 1.6% to $545,183.
It is worth remembering that the CBA includes a set of foods and food products that are part of the structure or consumption pattern of the city’s population, in quantities that satisfy the energy requirements of an “equivalent adult”which refers to an adult man between 30 and 59 years of age with moderate activity.
The institute’s methodology clarifies that the basket reflects the household food tastes and preferences as observed in the reference population and conforms to the greatest possible degree with the nutrient intake recommendations, at the lowest possible cost.
In parallel, CBT incorporates non-food goods and services considered basiclinked to housing, education, transportation and communications, among others. Furthermore, the values mentioned previously correspond to a household composed of a woman and a man aged 35 years, both economically active and homeowners, and two male children aged 9 and 6.
The heterogeneity of the “non-poor” in the City of Buenos Aires
On the other hand, the CABA institute labeled as “not vulnerable poor” to households with these characteristics that receive an income of between $993,854.28 and $1,238,732.80. This last value corresponds to the cost of the Total Basket (CT)which adds to the CBT the expenses of acquiring or renewing durable goods for home furnishing and recreation, as well as those other expenses that have seasonal characteristics (clothing) or contingent, such as health products and services.
Those households with incomes between $1,238,732.80 and $1,548,416.00 were categorized as “fragile middle class”while the plain middle class It covered households with incomes between $1,548,416.00 and $4,954,931.23. Those who exceeded this last value were considered as sectors “accommodated”.
“This stratification provides, on the one hand, the possibility of identifying the most unprotected sectors of society in terms of situations of indigence and poverty and, on the other, it accounts for the heterogeneity of the non-poor sectors in order to facilitate a more comprehensive analysis of the social situation of the City of Buenos Aires, that of each of the defined strata and its evolution over time,” explained the CABA report.
Source: Ambito
