6 out of 10 children and adolescents in school in Argentina are poor

The impact of the economic crisis in Argentina is increasingly felt by children and adolescents, which is reflected in different reports that warn about the growing youth population that falls below the poverty line. This reality is not alien to the field of education and this is demonstrated in the latest report of the Argentine Social Debt Observatory (ODSA) of the Argentine Catholic University (UCA), which revealed that 6 out of 10 children and adolescents attending school in the country are poor, that is, 62.9%. The largest proportion of this group is made up of students in public schools, where poverty reaches 7 out of 10 (71.6%). In the case of secular private schools, the percentage falls to 26.8 per cent, while the figure rises to 33.9 per cent among pupils in parochial or religious schools. When taking into account both privately managed sectors, the analysis shows that 3 out of 10 private school students (29.4%) are in poverty, which represents about 356,000 children and adolescents. The report “Characterization of the population of children and adolescents attending school according to the type of educational management” by the UCA, which covers children and adolescents between 0 and 17 years of age who attend educational institutions, also specified that 16.2% of Argentine students are in a situation of indigence. The majority of the country’s school-going children and adolescents attend state-run schools (72.4%), according to data from the latest Annual Survey prepared by the then Ministry of Education of the Nation. Of the three compulsory levels (initial, primary and secondary), kindergarten has the highest enrolment rates in the privately run sector. The study, which was published on Monday and corresponds to the second half of 2023, represents a slight improvement over the 2022 figures.The report was prepared by researchers Ianina Tuñón and Matías Maljar, based on data from the Argentine Social Debt Survey (referring only to urban centers with more than 80 thousand inhabitants) to investigate some characteristics of the school-age population, with the aim of offering evidence that can serve “the construction of public policies aimed at populations that at this juncture may face difficulties to continue studying” in private schools. The document, which was delivered to officials of the Ministry of Education, focuses on “the population of children and adolescents who, in situations of social vulnerability, attend privately run secular or religious schools, whose schooling involves an economic contribution by households.” The UCA survey is in addition to the report prepared by UNICEF that was released yesterday, which reveals that 7 out of 10 children live in conditions of poverty in Argentina.La figure includes about 8.6 million children under 18 years of age who live in households that do not reach the minimum threshold of economic income or in environments where they are deprived of their rights.

Original source in Spanish