In the last year, poverty among retirees in Argentina increased alarmingly, doubling its incidence. According to a private study, The poverty rate in this group rose from 13.2% in the first half of 2023 at 30.8% in the same period of 2024, an increase of 17.6 percentage points.
“This data shows that 1 in 3 retirees lives in povertyand that in the last year more than half a million retirees (542 thousand people) joined this situation,” the report highlights.
In the particular case of retirees, there is a marked increase in the proportion of people affected by poverty. Although those over 65 years of age continue to be the age group with the lowest incidence, the increase in poverty within this sector has been significant during the last year, reflecting a growing vulnerability in this historically more sheltered population.
This conclusion was reached from the study titled “Poverty and Indigence: Profiles of poverty. “Proposals for its approach in recent Argentina”carried out by researchers Eduardo Chávez Molina (from the Gino Germani Institute, UBA and University of Mar del Plata), José Rodríguez de la Fuente (from CONICET and the Gino Germani Institute) and Mariana Sosa (from CONICET).
The report comprehensively analyzes the incidence of poverty in various sectors of the population and highlights a surprising reality of recent years: eThe increase in poverty among workers in a formal dependency relationshipand not only among those in informal or precarious jobs, as used to be thought. In particular, in the group of formal employees, a growing trend in poverty is observed, especially in sectors such as commerce, construction, manufacturing industry, and accommodation and gastronomy services.
The study also classifies workers according to their workload into three groups: fully employed, overemployed and underemployed. In the case of the underemployed, that is, those who work fewer hours than necessary or desired, a notable increase in poverty is observed, which went from 40.9% in 2016 to 67.1% in 2024. This reflects their high vulnerability, since they usually face low and insufficient income, characteristic of this type of employment.
However, Poverty also increased significantly among the fully employed and overemployed. In the case of the fully employed, poverty rose from 17.4% in 2016 to 37.9% in 2024, while among the overemployed it rose from 20.2% to 44.4% in the same period. This shows that, although the impact of poverty is most severe among the underemployed, other groups also experienced significant economic deterioration.
When poverty among retirees accelerated, according to the UCA
The acceleration of this data began in 2020, largely due to the economic and social crisis generated by the COVID-19 pandemic. This situation reveals a worsening working and salary conditions for all sectors, especially those with unstable jobs or those with lower workloads.
The study also detailed the difference in the impact of poverty between formal and informal wage earners. It is observed a notable disparity in favor of those who have formal jobs: Poverty among informal wage earners is more than double that of formal wage earners (64.3% compared to 27.8%). However, this difference is reducing due to the deterioration of the wages of formal workers, which means that more formal employees are falling into poverty and approaching the situation of informal workers.
This reduction in the gap is not due to good news, but to more precarious salary conditions among those who work white-collar, which makes them more vulnerable.
Poverty affected all sectors
In the first half of this yearOr, the impact of poverty affected all sectors. Poor formal wage earners increased by 50% (+740 thousand people), while informal wage earners increased by 27% (+513 thousand people). Compared to the previous semester, poverty grew significantly both among formal wage earners (from 18.1% to 27.8%) and among informal workers (from 49.2% to 64.3%). Furthermore, in year-on-year terms, Poverty increased in all sectors: among formal ones, it rose from 16.4% to 27.8%, and among informal ones, it went from 47.8% to 64.3%.
Source: Ambito
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