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ARGENTINA: Multiple Social Assistance Plans Still Fall Short

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, May 4 2005 (IPS) - The Argentine government has a number of public assistance plans to battle the poverty into which an unprecedented proportion of the population fell in the wake of the late 2001 economic and social collapse. But the coverage still falls far short of reaching everyone who needs it.

“I tried to sign up for a social plan, but they told me there’s no more room,” Yanina Martínez, a young mother of two, told IPS, referring to the Unemployed Heads of Household Plan, which was created by the government in mid-2002 to provide small monthly stipends to the jobless.

But the enrolment period closed that same year, and many poor families were left out of the programme.

Although Martínez, who lives in the La Cava slum on the north side of Greater Buenos Aires, is unemployed and has dependent children, she does not receive a monthly subsidy from the government, only food aid.

“I have to send the children out to beg,” she said with a broken voice.

Martínez, who is single, lives with her mother, sisters and brothers. She and her children make up what is described by sociologists as a “hidden family” living under the roof of another head of household.

She did not finish primary school and has never held a job. Although she said she would like to find some kind of employment, she pointed out that it is difficult to get a job with her level of formal schooling and without any money for public transport, to get out of the neighbourhood for a job search.

In an interview with IPS, Deputy Minister of Social Development Daniel Arroyo explained that the government’s poverty alleviation efforts are based on three main programmes: the Food Security Plan; the Local Development and Social Economy Plan (known as “Manos a la Obra”); and the Unemployed Heads of Households Plan.

The Food Security Plan provides food aid to families and community soup kitchens, which mushroomed during the late 2001-2002 crisis.

“It is a purely welfare-based plan, for the neediest, and reaches 4.5 million people. It does not attempt to foment social inclusion or provide people with tools to increase their incomes, but is merely a palliative measure,” said Arroyo.

The official was especially enthusiastic about the Local Development and Social Economy Plan’s potential for promoting development, by providing machinery, tools and other productive inputs, as well as loans. But it covers a smaller number of people: “We finance 33,800 projects, reaching 425,000 people,” he said.

The third main prong in the government’s poverty alleviation efforts is the Unemployed Heads of Households Plan, which provides a monthly stipend of 150 pesos (52 dollars) in exchange for community services.

The workfare scheme was originally aimed at covering all families in need, but after two million heads of households had signed up, the registration period was closed, and many households were left out.

Furthermore, the plan does not cover the elderly or unemployed heads of households without dependent children under 18.

Even Martínez could be turned aside because her mother already receives the stipend, since each family is only entitled to one monthly payment, and Yanina and her children live under the same roof as her mother and siblings.

The “piquetero” movements – unemployed protesters who block traffic with “piquetes” or pickets, to draw attention to their plight – are demanding an increase in the monthly payment to unemployed heads of households.

The organisations, many of whose members receive the state subsidy, are also calling for a new registration period, to allow more families to sign up.

The plan currently benefits 1.6 million people, 70 percent of whom are mothers living on their own, or with an unemployed husband.

In addition to the three main programmes, there are two newer plans: the Community Employment Plans (PECs) and the Families Plan.

The PECS provide 150 pesos (52 dollars) a month to 300,000 unemployed workers. The payments are distributed by piquetero organisations, which according to the complaints of many beneficiaries demand a small portion of the 150-peso stipend.

The Families Plan, created in February, grants payments to 240,000 mothers, ranging from 150 pesos a month for families with up to three children, 175 for families with four, and 200 pesos for families with five children or more.

But Martínez should not get her hopes up about the Families Plan, because since it is only designed for those who have already registered with the Heads of Households Plan but would benefit from a change, either because they would draw a bigger subsidy or due to difficulties in fulfilling community service requirements.

Unlike the Labour Ministry’s PECs and Heads of Households Plan, the Ministry of Social Development’s Families Plan is not a workfare scheme.

The mothers (or fathers who are raising their children on their own) enrolled in the Families Plan must demonstrate that their sons and daughters are up-to-date on vaccinations and medical check-ups, and that they attend school regularly.

“We want the Families Plan to serve as a foundation. If the mother also works, or signs up for the ‘Manos a la Obra’ (Local Development and Social Economy Plan) plan, so much the better,” said Arroyo.

But he admitted that the social assistance plans are not open to everyone in need, because the government lacks the resources to make the coverage universal.

In Argentina, a family of four with an income of less than 772 pesos (266 dollars) a month is considered poor, while a family living on less than 344 pesos (118 dollars) a month is classified as “indigent” or extremely poor.

According to official statistics, the poverty rate, which soared to 57.5 percent of the population after the late 2001 economic meltdown, has dropped to 40.2 percent, thanks to the country’s steady economic recovery.

Meanwhile, the extreme poverty level, which stood at 25 percent of the population at the height of the crisis, has shrunk to 15 percent according to the latest figures from the National Institute of Statistics and Census, which date to October 2004.

But the official figures only actually reflect the situation in the country’s 28 biggest cities, which are home to 70 percent of the total population of 38 million, Ana Raneri, an economist with the Central de Trabajadores Argentinos trade union federation, told IPS.

According to Raneri, if poverty estimates take into account the rural population as well, the total number of poor and extremely poor reach 15 and 5.8 million, respectively.

This means that despite the government’s wide range of social assistance plans, the coverage still falls far short. Caritas, the Catholic charity organisation that helps oversee the implementation of the welfare programmes, says there are 400,000 extremely poor families in Argentina that receive no public assistance whatsoever.

According to the first of the eight Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) adopted by the international community at the September 2000 United Nations General Assembly, the proportion of the world’s population living in extreme poverty (on less than a dollar a day) must be cut in half by 2015 (from 1990 levels).

But it will be difficult to reach that goal. The Kirchner administration has already stated that it lacks the funds to reopen enrolment in the social plans, and that new families cannot replace families that drop out because the head of household has found a job.

In other words, as the beneficiaries find employment, the plans will gradually be phased out.

“We believe that reducing extreme poverty with the plans that the state has created so far will be a very difficult task,” said architect Cristina Resano, Caritas representative on the National Consultative Council.

The Council was set up along with the Heads of Households Plan to oversee and monitor the implementation of the public assistance programmes.

“We must design education and training policies tailored to the reality of families where children grow up without going to school and without seeing their parents go to work,” she told IPS.

“As they are currently functioning, the plans keep people trapped in poverty,” she argued.

“In some cases, people are able to leave extreme poverty behind. But to make the leap out of poverty, the only route is education and genuine, steady jobs,” said the architect, who criticises social assistance plans that are not universal.

Resano sees the Families Plan as “a solution for someone who has no job skills, and who is not ever going to acquire them.

“It is for people who have not finished school, whose children have dropped out of school and have no chance of joining the labour market, not even with vocational training, because they have no culture of work,” she said.

Arroyo is more optimistic, although he recognises that reducing poverty will be an uphill task. “What we want to do with the Families Plan is break down intergenerational poverty, to keep poverty from being reproduced in extremely poor families by providing a nutritious diet, health care and education to the children.”

The deputy minister divides the beneficiaries of the Unemployed Heads of Households Plan into two categories.

The first includes those who fell into poverty during the economic crisis, who he said have a greater chance of getting back on their feet and gradually rejoining the formal or informal labour market by finding a job or starting up a microenterprise.

But he described one-third as “structurally poor”, people who have been living in extreme poverty for years and were left completely at the fringes of society by the crisis.

“They are the most vulnerable, the people who have neither schooling nor skills. This is a sector of extreme poverty that we want to ‘reconvert’, so that they can take part in productive programmes, even if it takes a few years,” said Arroyo.