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The silent hunger: What Argentina’s falling poverty misses

Milei’s cuts have reduced the number of people living in poverty, but the data doesn’t tell the whole story

By Florence Evans
The silent hunger: What Argentina’s falling poverty misses
Cooks at the 'Gustavo Cortiñas' community kitchen receive daily hundreds of plastic containers they fill with food and serve at midday | Courtesy of La Poderosa
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At the end of March, Argentina’s government celebrated a dramatic fall in the poverty rate: 28.2% of the population is now living under the poverty line, down from a peak of 52.9% in 2024, according to INDEC, the official statistics agency. 

President Javier Milei took to social media to cheer the purported success. “Poverty keeps falling. Fact, not narrative,” he wrote on X in Spanish, adding: “MAGA [Make Argentina Great Again]!”

In Milei's Argentina, the idea of ‘fact, not narrative’ does significant work in reshaping how the government frames poverty alleviation. ‘Narrative’ is cast as manipulation, while ‘facts’ are presented as neutral. What gets measured matters, and what doesn’t get measured does not exist.

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Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0