Poverty has grown strongly again in recent months as a result of the economic crisis and, according to a private analysis, it already has five times more influence on young people than the elderly.
Among the population younger than 20 years, poverty reaches 38 percent, while in people between 20 and 60 it is 23 percent.
In turn, among those over 60, it is at 7 percent, said the Institute of Social Development Argentina (Idesa).
President Mauricio Macri has recently admitted that the "devaluation" of the peso, which has already reached 40 per cent a year, and the inflationary "rebound" will increase the problems affecting millions of people and whose reduction was among the government's priorities. according to the commitments of the 2015 and 2017 election campaigns.
The pension system, a "destabilizing" factor
At present, the main components of national public spending are pensions and retirement, which represent around 40 percent of total expenditure, with an expansion that is significantly higher than the rest of the expenditure and revenue.
For example, until now this year, the payment to pensioners increased by a rate of 30 percent year-on-year when the tax funds did so at 22 percent, Idesa said in his analysis of the situation of poverty.
"This dynamic makes the pension system the most important destabilizing factor in public finances", according to the report.
Idesa states that an accelerated expansion of pension expenditure not only explains the unsustainable level of the budget deficit, but also limits and limits other activities of the State.
When referring to the social consequences of pension expenditure that are so high and with such expansive growth, Idesa pointed out the difference in poverty rate according to age groups.
In this sense, with the INDEC family survey corresponding to the first quarter of 2018, it is estimated that poverty affects five times more young people than people older than 60 years.
"This gap is related to the fact that the pension policy applied in the past decade was effective in reducing poverty among the elderly, but because of its rudimentary design at the expense of the rest of the population and in particular of the children and young people ", said the Idesa study.
This is because the accelerated growth in social security spending obliges us to sacrifice other state payouts with a major impact on children and adolescents (such as child benefit) and to apply very bad taxes (including inflation) that create reduce jobs.
So, the pension expenses ultimately make an important contribution to the regressive distribution of income, according to the Institute.
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