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Food, Medical, and Educational Relief
PROJECT MERCY
PROJECT MERCY
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Educate-A-Child
Medi-Shipments
Clothing Relief
Home Restoration
Build-A-Center
Goat Supply
Disaster Relief
Medi-Shipments
Clothing Relief
Home Restoration
Build-A-Center
Goat Supply
Disaster Relief
In These United States
Poverty In South America
A Closer Look At Argentina
Poverty In Africa
Poverty In Columbia
Will Poverty Ever End?
Poverty In South America
A Closer Look At Argentina
Poverty In Africa
Poverty In Columbia
Will Poverty Ever End?
While the government and analysts argue over the veracity of official figures that show a fall in poverty in Argentina, millions of children and adolescents are living short of food, education, healthcare and even housing.
INDEC classes as "poor" those families whose monthly income only covers food, while the extreme poor or "indigent" are those who cannot even afford a basic diet. According to figures from June this year, a family of two adults and two children with an income of less than 250 dollars a month is considered poor, while an income of 115 dollars a month or less would make them indigent.
According to the Health Ministry, 700,000 children are born each year and 11,000 die before their first birthday. Six out of ten deaths are due to easily avoidable causes. Half of all children under two suffer from anaemia due to lack of iron. Their brain development is affected and this influences their future capacity to learn and interact socially. These children also frequently show delayed growth. Official figures show that 11 percent of children under six are smaller than they should be for their age.
The situation prompted the Argentine office of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) to launch the "Buen comienzo" (Good Start) program, aiming to remind the public of the rights of children and the specific kind of care needed by children under three. "The prenatal stage and the first three years of life are a critical period for the development of children's cognitive, language and social and emotional skills," UNICEF representative Andrés Criscaut declared. An estimated 40 percent of an adult's mental skills and abilities are formed in this vital early stage.
"'Buen comienzo' is a media campaign to inform people and raise awareness of this," he added. The campaign targets parents and anyone else responsible for children under three, "because 80 percent of decisions related to early child development depend on them, and these people have a great deal of influence on their progress. A decent diet alone is not enough. Children must be guaranteed safety and trust, and the abilities and characteristics of each child must be valued in order for them to grow emotionally, supported by close links with their parents and caretakers.
In 2003, INDEC reported that 54.7 percent of the total population were poor. And on July 28, the Economy Ministry announced that the poverty rate had shrunk in the first half of 2004 to 46 percent of the population (15.5 million people) and indigence to 16.3 percent (5.5 million). “More than three million people have come out of indigence and 2.7 million have left poverty behind," said an official communique, which prompted harsh criticism from economists of different stripes.
The very fact that the Economy Ministry presented a report on poverty and indigence means it has taken over functions which belong to INDEC, which is responsible for the Permanent Households Survey (EPH) which is used to calculate poverty and indigence..
This is the second time that Economy Minister Roberto Lavagna has repeated the sad history of his predecessors (under previous governments), presenting statistical information which disregards INDEC figures. The EPH only covers urban areas, which are home to 93 percent of the total Argentine population -- 36.3 million people -- and no data is collected on the remaining seven percent who live in rural areas.
There discrepancies between the Economy Ministry information and INDEC data, particularly when measuring extreme poverty. But the Ministry says the variations between its report and INDEC statistics are due to the fact that INDEC only takes into account 70 percent of the government subsidies for the unemployed which are paid by the Labour Ministry, like the "Heads of Household" program which provides 50 dollars a month to unemployed people with dependent children.
According to INDEC, 1.26 million people received the monthly stipend during the first half of 2004, while the Labor Ministry says there were 1.79 million beneficiaries. This is a statistical aberration, used by manipulators, mixing the outcomes of two different sources of information. This is even more the case when we consider that one source is a representative sample of a reference population, as in the INDEC EPH, and the other is information gathered on the basis of the entire population. There is no reason to presume, as the Economy Ministry does, that all of the subsidy plans not picked up in INDEC data are aimed at the extreme poor.
Nor is it correct to assume that if the aid did get to the extreme poor, that these 50 dollars would be enough to help them escape from extreme poverty, when the upper limit for this category is an income of more than twice this sum (115 dollars), he said. The latest information available for the second half of 2003 show poverty affecting 47.8 percent of the population, and indigence 20.5 percent. These percentages of the total population meant 18.3 million were poor and 7.8 million extremely poor.
The current Family Allowances program provides specific government support for children. This program gives each head of household a monthly payment of seven to ten dollars per child, depending on where they live, but only in cases in which the beneficiary is on the social security register..
Given the disastrous state of the labor market, where only 35 percent of the workforce is employed in the formal sector of the economy, the number of children covered by this program doesn't even make up 30 percent" of the national total. Argentine children are truly suffering from a lack of food, clothing, medicines and housing.
INDEC figures show that 12 percent of children under 14 are working, even though child labor is illegal in Argentina. Although there is no specific data on the wages paid to working children, they are generally clandestine workers involved in the black market in low-paying precarious jobs. Information is available to show that 50 percent of all individuals working in the informal economy earn no more than 50 dollars per month, and all working children are believed to fall into this bracket.
INDEC classes as "poor" those families whose monthly income only covers food, while the extreme poor or "indigent" are those who cannot even afford a basic diet. According to figures from June this year, a family of two adults and two children with an income of less than 250 dollars a month is considered poor, while an income of 115 dollars a month or less would make them indigent.
According to the Health Ministry, 700,000 children are born each year and 11,000 die before their first birthday. Six out of ten deaths are due to easily avoidable causes. Half of all children under two suffer from anaemia due to lack of iron. Their brain development is affected and this influences their future capacity to learn and interact socially. These children also frequently show delayed growth. Official figures show that 11 percent of children under six are smaller than they should be for their age.
The situation prompted the Argentine office of the United Nations Children's Fund (UNICEF) to launch the "Buen comienzo" (Good Start) program, aiming to remind the public of the rights of children and the specific kind of care needed by children under three. "The prenatal stage and the first three years of life are a critical period for the development of children's cognitive, language and social and emotional skills," UNICEF representative Andrés Criscaut declared. An estimated 40 percent of an adult's mental skills and abilities are formed in this vital early stage.
"'Buen comienzo' is a media campaign to inform people and raise awareness of this," he added. The campaign targets parents and anyone else responsible for children under three, "because 80 percent of decisions related to early child development depend on them, and these people have a great deal of influence on their progress. A decent diet alone is not enough. Children must be guaranteed safety and trust, and the abilities and characteristics of each child must be valued in order for them to grow emotionally, supported by close links with their parents and caretakers.
In 2003, INDEC reported that 54.7 percent of the total population were poor. And on July 28, the Economy Ministry announced that the poverty rate had shrunk in the first half of 2004 to 46 percent of the population (15.5 million people) and indigence to 16.3 percent (5.5 million). “More than three million people have come out of indigence and 2.7 million have left poverty behind," said an official communique, which prompted harsh criticism from economists of different stripes.
The very fact that the Economy Ministry presented a report on poverty and indigence means it has taken over functions which belong to INDEC, which is responsible for the Permanent Households Survey (EPH) which is used to calculate poverty and indigence..
This is the second time that Economy Minister Roberto Lavagna has repeated the sad history of his predecessors (under previous governments), presenting statistical information which disregards INDEC figures. The EPH only covers urban areas, which are home to 93 percent of the total Argentine population -- 36.3 million people -- and no data is collected on the remaining seven percent who live in rural areas.
There discrepancies between the Economy Ministry information and INDEC data, particularly when measuring extreme poverty. But the Ministry says the variations between its report and INDEC statistics are due to the fact that INDEC only takes into account 70 percent of the government subsidies for the unemployed which are paid by the Labour Ministry, like the "Heads of Household" program which provides 50 dollars a month to unemployed people with dependent children.
According to INDEC, 1.26 million people received the monthly stipend during the first half of 2004, while the Labor Ministry says there were 1.79 million beneficiaries. This is a statistical aberration, used by manipulators, mixing the outcomes of two different sources of information. This is even more the case when we consider that one source is a representative sample of a reference population, as in the INDEC EPH, and the other is information gathered on the basis of the entire population. There is no reason to presume, as the Economy Ministry does, that all of the subsidy plans not picked up in INDEC data are aimed at the extreme poor.
Nor is it correct to assume that if the aid did get to the extreme poor, that these 50 dollars would be enough to help them escape from extreme poverty, when the upper limit for this category is an income of more than twice this sum (115 dollars), he said. The latest information available for the second half of 2003 show poverty affecting 47.8 percent of the population, and indigence 20.5 percent. These percentages of the total population meant 18.3 million were poor and 7.8 million extremely poor.
The current Family Allowances program provides specific government support for children. This program gives each head of household a monthly payment of seven to ten dollars per child, depending on where they live, but only in cases in which the beneficiary is on the social security register..
Given the disastrous state of the labor market, where only 35 percent of the workforce is employed in the formal sector of the economy, the number of children covered by this program doesn't even make up 30 percent" of the national total. Argentine children are truly suffering from a lack of food, clothing, medicines and housing.
INDEC figures show that 12 percent of children under 14 are working, even though child labor is illegal in Argentina. Although there is no specific data on the wages paid to working children, they are generally clandestine workers involved in the black market in low-paying precarious jobs. Information is available to show that 50 percent of all individuals working in the informal economy earn no more than 50 dollars per month, and all working children are believed to fall into this bracket.
POVERTY IN ARGENTINA
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