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POVERTY-ARGENTINA
Children First
By Viviana Alonso
BUENOS AIRES, Aug 3, 2004 (IPS) - 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.
"Argentina has beaten an all-time record: it is the only country in the
world where poverty has grown faster than the population," Tomás Raffo, an
economist with the Argentine Workers Central (CTA) trade union's Institute
of Studies and Training, told IPS.
"In 1970 the population stood at 22 million, and one million were poor.
Today the population is 38 million and 18 million are poor," he said. In
other words, today there are 16 million more people in Argentina, and 17
million more poor.
The latest National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (INDEC) figures,
from May 2003, found that poverty affected 73.5 percent of children under
14, 41.2 percent of whom lived in extreme poverty, while 64.2 percent of
adolescents between the ages of 15 and 18 were poor, and 30.8 percent of
that proportion were destitute.
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)
programme, 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 told IPS.
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," he said.
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 Jul. 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," said Raffo.
"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," he
added.
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.
Raffo pointed out 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" programme 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 Labour 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," explained Raffo.
"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," he argued.
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.
In Raffo's opinion, therefore, the best solution is simply to stick to
data from INDEC, the agency responsible for compiling such figures.
"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 programme provides specific government
support for children, explained Raffo.
"This programme 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," he pointed out.
"Given the disastrous state of the labour market, where only 35 percent
of the workforce is employed in the formal sector of the economy, the number
of children covered by this programme doesn't even make up 30 percent" of
the national total, maintained Raffo.
But children are not only 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 labour 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," said Raffo.
"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," he stated.
(END)
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