Argentina: Over 58% of children live in dire poverty

Archbishop Eduardo Martin

Around 7.6 million children and young people in Argentina are living in dire poverty, the Archbishop of Rosario, Mgr Eduardo Eliseo Martin told national meeting of diocesan representatives and migrant chaplains today.

If 58.7 percent of young people under the age of 18 are poor, "it is clear that this is a sign of something that could not be solved..We all are responsible, in one way or another, although we have 30 years of democracy, which is a very big achievement, we still have to solve the issue of equity. Structural poverty levels could not be lowered," the Archbishop said.

Archbishop Martin was commenting on the results of recent research carried out by the Universidad Católica Argentina (UCA). The study points out that statistics are the same as those in 2015, but lower than 2010, when the percentage of children in poverty was 63.7%.

The most alarming numbers are the indicators that measure homelessness (25.2%) and lack of access to healthcare (22.7%). The report shows that 15.4% of children have no access to education and 8.7% do not have adequate nutrition.

Between 2010 and 2016, multidimensional child poverty in Argentina dropped by 5.1 percentage points, and the rate of extreme deprivation between 2015 and 2016 fell from 15.9% to 14.8%.

According to Aica news, Archbishop Martin told the meeting that, "the Church has been saying, in several documents, for years that an appeal to social responsibility is seriously needed. What we say to leadership is that it must have a lot of humility."

He concluded: "It is clear that in order to reach a consensus on state policies, one has to wait after the elections."