A government report published on Monday found that poverty fell by 14.8 percentage points in the second half of 2024. That figure stood at 38.1% after reaching 52.9% in the first six months of that year.

The spike in early 2024, which put poverty at its highest level in two decades, came on the heels of a 54% devaluation in December 2023, two days after President Javier Milei took office and amid spiraling inflation from a series of unfunded tax cuts and other spending measures by the outgoing government.

Presidential spokesman Manuel Adorni heralded the figure as the lowest in three years. 

“Lowering inflation is the best way of getting people out of poverty, and it’s what none of the self-proclaimed popular governments did,” he said in a statement, shortly after the figures were released. 

According to the National Institute for Statistics and Censuses (INDEC, by its Spanish acronym), 28.6% of Argentine households were living in poverty at the end of last year, down 13.9 points from the first half of 2024. Indigence levels declined as well, from 18.1% to 8.2% of the general population and from 13.6% to 6.4% of Argentine households. These declines were observed in all regions of the country.

INDEC considers a family “destitute” when its monthly income is less than the basic food basket, while it considers a family “poor” if it earns less than the basic food basket plus services, known as the total basic basket. 

“These indices reflect the failure of past policies, which plunged millions of Argentines into precarious situations while promoting the idea of helping the poor, even as poverty continued to increase,” the Milei administration said in a separate statement. “The current administration has shown that the path of economic freedom and fiscal responsibility is the way to reduce poverty in the long term.”

“President Javier Milei and his economic team, led by Minister Luis Caputo, will continue this path, which has proven to restore the dignity denied to the Argentine people for decades and which has made the fight against poverty one of its most important pillars,” it continued. “This is the first administration in many years to begin a real process of reducing poverty.”

Inflation has come down dramatically under Milei, falling from 25.5% in January 2024 — his first full month in office — to 2.4% last month. 

However, not all research supports the administration’s triumphalism when it comes to Argentina’s poverty rates. A report by the Institute of Socioeconomic Statistics and Trends released earlier this month found that “social indicators continue to show no significant improvement.” 

The same report, which works with the grocery story association in Córdoba, found that 57% of families surveyed could not access the basic food basket and 73.2% of those that could were only able to do so with government welfare assistance.