Poverty In Argentina Research Articles

Impact of Taxes, Transfers, and Subsidies on Income Distribution and Poverty in Argentina

This study evaluates the impact of direct and indirect taxes, as well as public expenditure on transfers (monetary and in-kind, economic subsidies, healthcare, and education), on income distribution and poverty in Argentina. It utilizes a standard fiscal incidence analysis and combines data from the Permanent Household Survey (EPH) and the National Household Expenditure Survey (ENGHo). The findings indicate that fiscal policy has been a powerful instrument in reducing inequality and poverty. However, unusually high levels of public spending could potentially render the programs unsustainable.

When the Wheelchair Is Not Enough: What Capabilities Approaches Offer Assistive Technology Practice in Rural Argentina

This article considers the lives of disabled people requiring assistive technology who live in contexts of urban poverty. Provision is often constrained by a range of contextual factors which seem outside the scope of health and rehabilitation services. We critically reflect on health, rehabilitation, and capabilities approaches. We explore both rehabilitation and capabilities approaches with posture and mobility practice in an area of urban poverty in Argentina. Contrasting rehabilitation and capabilities approaches to a composite posture and mobility case provides a range of insights. Rehabilitation approaches start with the individual as the locus for intervention. Capabilities approaches reframe interventions such as posture and mobility in terms of the freedoms they offer, and highlight the barriers or capability gaps that must be addressed to achieve outcomes. We conclude that capabilities approaches give practitioners the scope to go beyond posture and mobility processes and attend to the other factors, across the ecosystem, that prevent people from realizing their freedoms. To address capability gaps, a broader scope of practice for health practitioners may include consumer empowerment strategies; partnering with the community; and systemic advocacy with duty holders able to address systemic barriers.

Atribuciones sobre las causas de la pobreza general e infantil en Argentina

In the last decades, different studies have addressed the perspectives of people regarding the causes of poverty, as they could play a fundamental role in the development of individual and social attitudes, beliefs and expectations towards people living in such a condition, and in the strategies implemented to solve related problems and issues. In addition, many of those studies have investigated the causes of poverty using the theoretical model proposed by Feagin (1972), which suggests three broad explanations: (1) individualistic (i. e., causal attribution is placed on the poor themselves); (2) structural (i. e., poverty is due to external social and economic factors); and (3) fatalistic (i. e., poverty is attributed to factors such as bad luck). Most of those studies have been carried out considering the causes of poverty in general, which means that there is very little research aimed at studying specifically the causes of child poverty. Given the high incidence of poverty in Argentina the knowledge about such perspectives is of interest for multiple basic and applied purposes. In this sense, the present study proposed to evaluate the attributions of the causes of poverty in general and child poverty in particular, by adults from Argentina, through two virtual questionnaires (one asking for the causes of poverty in general, and the other for the causes of child poverty). The sample included responses from 1 659 citizens of Argentina from 17 to 90 years old (M = 45.72, SD = 16.94). The questionnaires included 32 items aimed at evaluating the attribution of causes of general poverty, and 30 items related to child poverty. Participants were asked to indicate the importance of each item as a cause of poverty on a five-point Likert-type scale (1 = does not matter; 5 = extremely important). Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses were implemented (separately from the general and child questionnaires) and retained items with factor loadings at .40 or above. In addition, for the general questionnaire, a second approach was implemented to analyze if the factorial structure supported by different studies in the literature was confirmed in this sample. For such a purpose, confirmatory factor analyses were implemented. Regarding the questionnaire for the causes of general poverty, the exploratory analysis allowed identifying a three-factor structure (as in the case of other studies) (RMSEA = .071; CFI = .94; TLI = .93), which was not verified in the confirmatory analysis (RMSEA = .103; CFI = .88; TLI = .86). On the other hand, the results of the second approach suggest the confirmation of the two-factor model proposed in the literature (RMSEA = .083; CFI = .96; TLI = .95). This pattern of results suggests sensitivity to the inclusion of new items. In this sense, in future studies it would be important to invest efforts in determining new items from consultations with experts and other social actors. Regarding the questionnaire for the causes of poverty in children, two-factor model was identified and confirmed (RMSEA = .074; CFI = .94; TLI = .93), which is a new piece of evidence in the field, suggesting variability in the attribution of causes of poverty according to the considered age group, and whose potential mechanisms in comparison with the studies on adult poverty should be explored in future research (e. g., individual, contextual and cultural factors). Finally, this study confirms that having valid and reliable instruments to explore the causal attributions of general and child poverty would be important to advance in the understanding of poverty as a complex and multidimensional phenomenon. https://doi.org/10.16888/interd.2022.39.3.17

Structural informality and occupational classes in a peripheral context: precariousness and in-work poverty in Argentina 2003 – 2020.

The aim of this article is to relate the tradition of studies on socio-occupational classes with the perspective of structural informality. Taking Argentina as a case study, it examines the way in which occupational class inequality and job quality condition the level of welfare of the employed population. The study follows a quantitative methodology based on Argentina's Permanent Household Survey. Regression models show a persistent effect over time of social class and job quality on the probability of experiencing poverty and an interaction between both variables, suggesting that job insecurity is a transversal phenomenon across occupational classes.

Structural informality and occupational classes in a peripheral context: precariousness and in-work poverty in Argentina 2003 – 2020.

The aim of this article is to relate the tradition of studies on socio-occupational classes with the perspective of structural informality. Taking Argentina as a case study, it examines the way in which occupational class inequality and job quality condition the level of welfare of the employed population. The study follows a quantitative methodology based on Argentina's Permanent Household Survey. Regression models show a persistent effect over time of social class and job quality on the probability of experiencing poverty and an interaction between both variables, suggesting that job insecurity is a transversal phenomenon across occupational classes.

Microfinance and Profit Structure: A Comparison of Nonprofit and For-Profit Microfinance Institutions' Ability to Alleviate Poverty in Argentina

Microfinance and Profit Structure: A Comparison of Nonprofit and For-Profit Microfinance Institutions' Ability to Alleviate Poverty in Argentina

Which cooking and heating fuels are more likely to be used in energy-poor households? Exploring energy and fuel poverty in Argentina

Energy poverty in emerging countries has mainly been analysed in the literature as a problem of energy supply accessibility. However, this analysis is too simple, as in many of these countries there can be a problem of energy accessibility that is not necessarily linked to an insufficiency of energy supply but is related to the use of certain types of fuels or facilities to meet the energy needs of the household. Moreover, what can explain the choice of these fuels can also be an affordability energy problem, and this has been scarcely treated on energy poverty papers focused on developing countries. This work aims to shed light on this literature, analysing both the affordability and the accessibility energy problem of Argentine households. To do so, we use micro-data from an expenditure-survey. First, we measure the energy affordability problem by calculating the Boardman indicator. Second, we estimate two logit models to show how likely it is that the affordability energy problem explains the choice of facilities for cooking and heating that can indicate an energy accessibility problem. Third, to refine the results of our estimations, we calculate the ROC curves to measure the levels in which energy-poor and non-energy-poor household are better identified than with the standard identification of logit models. The results show that it is more probable that households characterized by monetary energy poverty use facilities that indicate an energy accessibility problem than households that are not energy poor.

Capturing Multidimensional Energy Poverty in South America: A Comparative Study of Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay

Roughly 789 million people have no access to energy, and around 2.8 billion people lack access to clean cooking solutions according to the World Bank, and so we also find many people that cannot afford energy (reliable and clean) at the current prices. In the literature, accessibility, availability, and affordability are underlined as the key drivers of energy poverty. In South America, these aspects have not been studied in depth. This research is relevant because it provides a standardized, cross-country, and comparable analysis of multidimensional energy poverty in the region. The study of energy poverty is critical for the development and well-being of countries, especially in regions such as South America, where this issue can be affected by geographical, cultural, infrastructure, and/or socio-economic differences. In this study, we measured the magnitude of energy poverty in Argentina, Brazil, Uruguay, and Paraguay. This methodology is based on the analysis of energy poverty through a multidimensional approach, considering three parameters as drivers of energy poverty in the countries: accessibility, availability, and affordability. Through a two-step process, first, we calculate the Weighted Average Energy Poverty Index (WAEPI), based on three proposed scenarios (W1, W2, and W3), and finally, through the Composite Energy Poverty Index (CEPI), we measure the existing gaps, based on the selected indicators, between the countries under study and the benchmark country. Additionally, we decided to focus our analysis on the country that has shown the highest level and gaps on multidimensional energy poverty in the region, as a case study to validate the results obtained through the chosen methodology. The results show that during the period of analysis (2000–2016), Paraguay has been the most energy-poor country among the countries under study, while Argentina has been the least energy-poor country. At the local level, we observed that, Paraguay, despite being one of the largest producers and exporters of clean hydroelectric energy in the region, still presents high levels of consumption of biomass or coal for cooking, while electricity only represents 17% of the total final energy consumption in the country (biomass and fossil fuels account for 83%). These results could lead the design of energy policies, projects, and programs to reduce the multidimensional energy poverty, nationally, also at the common platform: MERCOSUR. Finally, this study includes an analysis of policy implications and alternative solutions to eradicate energy poverty in the region.

Fiscal Policy in Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico and the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development

Fiscal policy is useful as a government instrument for supporting the economy, contributing to an increase in employment, and reducing inequality through more egalitarian income distribution. Over the past 30 years, developing countries have failed to increase their real wages due to the lack of domestic value-added in the era of globalization, where global supply chains are the driving factor for attracting foreign direct investment. Under such circumstances, the role of fiscal policy has become an important factor in creating the necessary conditions for boosting the economy. With the end of commodity-export-led growth, Mexico experienced a moderate reduction of 5 percent in poverty between 2014 and 2018 due to the structural adjustment of social policies and its economic and trade relationship with the United States; during the same period there has been no change in poverty in Argentina, and Brazil has suffered a rise in poverty. Following the global financial crisis, greater attention has been paid to fiscal policy in developed and developing countries — specifically Argentina, Brazil, and Mexico (ABM) — in order to attain macroeconomic stability. One of the consequences of the financial crisis is rising income inequality and its negative effects on economic growth. Over the past decade, fiscal policy has been adopted for the economic recovery. However, the recovery has been accompanied by a decrease in real wages of the middle class. The purpose of the present research is to critically examine the results of fiscal policy in ABM and the United Nations’ 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development.

Explorando los cambios de la pobreza en Argentina: 2003-2015

Este trabajo explora los cambios en la pobreza de ingresos en Argentina durante el período 2003-2015 utilizando diversas metodologías de descomposición. Los resultados sugieren que la mejora generalizada en el mercado laboral luego de la crisis fue el principal factor detrás de la fuerte caída de la pobreza en el período 2003-2007. En contraste, la reducción de la pobreza durante la etapa 2007-2011 está asociada al papel más activo que tomó la política social. Finalmente, durante el período 2011-2015 ningún factor contribuyó significativamente a la reducción de la pobreza.

Research on Non-profit Organizations’ Participation in the Antipoverty Problem in Argentina

The continuity, concealment and complexity of poverty in Argentina increased the difficulty of poverty governance, and the defects of the government and market in the process of dealing with the poverty also set obstacles for the governance of the poverty. In order to make up for the shortage of the government and the market, non-profit organizations with a profound philanthropic cultural tradition participated in the anti-poverty process in Argentina and played a positive role in promoting public services, providing employment assistance, offering technical assistance, developing agricultural markets and rights relief. In this process, the non-profit organizations have established cooperative relationships with public and private organizations respectively, and strengthened interactions with volunteers and the underprivileged group. In the process of fighting against poverty in Argentina, non-profit organizations have demonstrated the characteristics of grassroots and mediation, and played the role of participants in the poverty reduction program of the government, social resource mobilizers and interest coordinators. The experience of non-profit organizations in Argentina in anti-poverty is worthy of attention and reference, but the restriction of resources and government authority limits the role of non-profit organizations, and the disadvantages of non-profit organizations themselves also cause some negative effects.

The asymmetric effect of the business cycle on poverty in Argentina

After the crisis of 2002, Argentina started a process of strong recovery of the social indicators, which slowed from 2007 and has stagnated since 2012. The present situation is slightly better in relation to the 1990s, but worse if the comparison is made with the 1980s and the 1970s. Despite the high growth rates experienced until 2011, income distribution was the main cause of improvement in poverty and extreme poverty measures. This article examines the risk of reversing in the coming years part of the recovery achieved. This risk is based on the possible asymmetric effect of the business cycle on social indicators, analyzed through the income and income distribution elasticities of poverty and extreme poverty estimated for the 2003-2017 period.

The exchange rate cycle in Argentina

ABSTRACTThis article discusses the secular volatility of output, inflation, the exchange rate, and poverty in Argentina. Inflation, currency devaluation and a wide gross domestic product (GDP) cycle have been recurrent problems in Argentina for several decades. The literature has extensively discussed those issues from different viewpoints. This study focuses on a relatively unexplored theme that may contribute to a partial explanation. It deals with the continuous tendency to equalize different profitabilities resulting, in turn, from remarkably different sectoral purchasing power parities. Thus, for any given exchange rate, an incessant tendency toward the equalization of profitabilities generates opposing inflationary and devaluatory pressures. The resulting inflation-devaluation cycle feeds income redistribution, GDP fluctuation, real exchange rate instability, and high levels of uncertainty.

Psychotherapy, psychoanalysis and urban poverty in Argentina

ABSTRACTBased on ethnographic research carried out in the Buenos Aires Metropolitan Area, this paper examines the views of social actors on the psychoanalytically-oriented psychotherapy focused on marginalized populations. From Foucault's perspective on the forms of truth-telling, the aim of this paper is to analyze, as a preliminary research report, treatments according to the native ways of speaking and listening, which dominate the description of therapeutic experiences of patients who come to the treatment without any professional intermediation. The neoliberal transformations of the past decades in Argentina changed both the landscape of the public health system and the daily lives of marginalized people. Considering such changes, this paper examines the ways in which verbal actions (speaking and listening) take place in psychotherapy and mark the course not only of treatments but also the temporal rhythms of their development, and their various levels of efficacy. Finally, the discussion focuses on how ways of speaking and listening in treatments are modeled not only by institutional dynamics but also by the characteristics these verbal activities take in everyday life under the logics of power that prevail over them.

A SHAPLEY DECOMPOSITION OF MULTIDIMENSIONAL CHRONIC POVERTY IN ARGENTINA

ABSTRACTThis paper proposes a Shapley decomposition to analyse the evolution of chronic poverty in a multivariate setting using a chronic poverty measure proposed by Alkire and colleagues. The decomposition makes possible to assess a vast array of information to find the drivers of change in chronic poverty, and could be a valuable tool in the way public policy programmes focus resources. We present an empirical application of the changes in chronic poverty in Argentina during the period 2004–12 using the Permanent Household Survey. We found that households with older adults show great persistence of multidimensional chronic poverty in time while the employment indicators is found to be an important driver of the intensity of chronic poverty.

The Impact of Taxes and Social Spending on Inequality and Poverty in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay

How much redistribution and poverty reduction is being accomplished in Latin America through social spending, subsidies, and taxes? Standard fiscal incidence analyses applied to Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, Peru, and Uruguay using a comparable methodology yields the following results. Direct taxes and cash transfers reduce inequality and poverty by nontrivial amounts in Argentina, Brazil, and Uruguay but less so in Bolivia, Mexico, and Peru. While direct taxes are progressive, the redistributive impact is small because direct taxes as a share of GDP are generally low. Cash transfers are quite progressive in absolute terms, except in Bolivia where programs are not targeted to the poor. In Bolivia and Brazil, indirect taxes more than offset the poverty-reducing impact of cash transfers. When one includes the in-kind transfers in education and health, valued at government costs, they reduce inequality in all countries by considerably more than cash transfers, reflecting their relative size.

The Impact of Taxes and Social Spending on Inequality and Poverty in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico, and Peru: A Synthesis of Results

We apply a standard tax and benefit incidence analysis to estimate the impact on inequality and poverty of direct taxes, indirect taxes and subsidies, and social spending (cash and food transfers and in-kind transfers in education and health). The extent of inequality reduction induced by direct taxes and transfers is rather small (2 percentage points on average) especially when compared with that found in Western Europe (15 percentage points on average). What prevents Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil from achieving similar reductions in inequality is not the lack of revenues but the fact that they spend less on cash transfers -especially transfers that are progressive in absolute terms--as a share of GDP. Indirect taxes result in that net contributors to the fiscal system start at the fourth, third and even second decile on average, depending on the country. When in-kind transfers in education and health are added, however, the bottom six deciles are net recipients. The impact of transfers on inequality and poverty reduction could be higher if spending on direct cash transfers that are progressive in absolute terms is increased, leakages to the nonpoor are reduced and coverage of the extreme poor by direct transfer programs is expanded.

Middle class alliances to end poverty?

What role do ‘middle classes’ play in ending poverty, or do they, rather, perpetuate continuous impoverishment? How is poverty socially and racially constructed? What can we learn from comparative and decentred research on poverty? These and other questions are at the forefront in Victoria Lawson’s (2012) essay, which analyzes and theorizes processes and provides facts that cause and reiterate persistent poverty on a global scale. Her writing goes beyond common authoritative framings of poverty, where the poor are defined primarily in terms of lack of income or as a consequence of specific class, gender or racial relations that generate exclusion and impoverishment. Furthermore, poverty is also hegemonically explained in terms of personal inabilities, inappropriate behaviour and lack of entrepreneurial engagement, often attributed to bad governance and overall cultural disposition. These predominant views in mainstream media and in political discourse frame popular perceptions and attitudes to poverty as a measurable fact expressed in statistics, categories and benchmarks used to indicate social change and progress. The results are primarily quantitative analyses of poverty trends and achieved goals, such as expressed in the UN Millennium Development Goals. Nevertheless, do these statistics and standards really tell us about the wellbeing of individuals or communities, and do they in fact help deconstruct the structural reasons and motivations behind poverty generation and poverty maintenance? By introducing the concept of relational poverty Lawson provides the theoretical foundation for understanding persistent poverty as the result of deeply entrenched, historically developed economic and political relations (also see Mosse, 2010). The resulting social categorization reproduces and reiterates inequality and makes continuous exploitation possible. The fact that impoverished people are simultaneously excluded and dominated by the current social, economic and political system becomes the major argument in this thought-provoking essay. Lawson (2012: 5) provides a detailed critique of the conventional quantitative, authoritative approach on poverty research, which basically ‘deemphasizes structural dimensions of poverty’ and responds to these ideological and ontological limits by arguing that ‘people are poor because of powerful others’. This new spin to the debate on poverty in the work of Lawson and the Middle Class Poverty Politics Research Group focuses on the role of middle classes, and the mechanisms in place for acting in opposition to or in solidarity with the poor. Their investigation of the political potential of middle class/subaltern struggles around poverty in Argentina, Canada, South Africa, Thailand, the US and India is anchored in a comparative methodology that will help to understand the integration of communities and places into globalized processes and assist in the interpretation of resulting processes and structures that produce and maintain poverty. bs_bs_banner

The Impact of Taxes and Social Spending on Inequality and Poverty in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Mexico and Peru: A Synthesis of Results

We apply a standard tax and benefit incidence analysis to estimate the impact on inequality and poverty of direct taxes, indirect taxes and subsidies, and social spending (cash and food transfers and in-kind transfers in education and health). The extent of inequality reduction induced by direct taxes and transfers is rather small (2 percentage points on average) especially when compared with that found in Western Europe (15 percentage points on average). What prevents Argentina, Bolivia and Brazil from achieving similar reductions in inequality is not the lack of revenues but the fact that they spend less on cash transfers – especially transfers that are progressive in absolute terms--as a share of GDP. Indirect taxes result in that net contributors to the fiscal system start at the fourth, third and even second decile on average, depending on the country. When in-kind transfers in education and health are added, however, the bottom six deciles are net recipients. The impact of transfers on inequality and poverty reduction could be higher if spending on direct cash transfers that are progressive in absolute terms is increased, leakages to the nonpoor are reduced and coverage of the extreme poor by direct transfer programs is expanded.

La Tasa de Miseria de los Hogares. Una aproximación metodológica y conceptual a la medición, distribución espacial y variaciones de la pobreza extrema en Argentina durante la década del noventa

In this paper conducts a theoretical and methodological approach to the measurement of extreme poverty in Argentina in the last decade of the twentieth century. Was developed for it the Misery Rate of Households (TMH), which, using information from the National Census of Population, Households and Housing, can be detected and map in Argentina in 1991 and 2001. The results define the territorial fragmentation between the territory of Greater Northern Argentina and the rest of the country. It also forecasts are not encouraging, detected an increase of the fragmentation in the early twenty-first century.