Argentina’s poverty rises to 32 percent under Milei with more pain forecast
A 4.1-percentage-point rise in poverty in the first half of 2026 could be bad news for Milei's re-election bid.
Argentina’s poverty rate has risen, hitting 32.3 percent in the first half of 2026 under President Javier Milei, partly erasing the country’s earlier gains.
According to figures released by the national statistics agency INDEC on Thursday, the poverty rate rose 4.1 percentage points between January and June compared with the last half of 2025, moving from 28.2 to 32.3 percent.
Extreme poverty — where households cannot afford basic food needs — also rose from 6.3 to 7.5 percent.
Poverty surged to nearly 53 percent in the first half of 2024 after his government’s devaluation of the peso and sweeping spending cuts sharply reduced purchasing power. But the rate then fell rapidly as Milei’s austerity drive eased inflation, reaching 28.2 percent in the second half of 2025, the lowest level since early 2018.