Un reciente informe revela que el 73% de los jubilados en Argentina vive en la pobreza, contrastando con las cifras oficiales que indican un 17%. Silvia Gascón, directora del Centro de Envejecimiento Activo y Longevidad, destaca las dificultades que enfrentan los adultos mayores para cubrir sus necesidades básicas con ingresos insuficientes.
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00:00About pensions, you don't need to be an experienced economist to know the difficulties that a pensioner faces
00:09who charges the minimum wage.
00:11Can you live with dignity with 234,000 pesos, which is what a pensioner charges in September, plus the 70,000 bonus?
00:17Well, the answer is clear, no.
00:20And if we talk about poverty, there is a debate about how many poor pensioners there are in Argentina.
00:28While the official numbers say something like 17%, two out of ten,
00:33there is a number that will surprise you, and I want to talk about it with the author of this study, this report,
00:40which says that 73% of the total pensioners live in poverty.
00:46Silvia Gascón is director of the Center for Active and Longevity Aging of the University and Health.
00:52She is the author of the report, I repeat.
00:54How are you, Silvia? Good morning, Eduardo Bataglia is my name.
00:57Hello, Eduardo, good morning, how are you?
00:59Good. Let's see, let's put on the table the numbers of poverty when we talk about older adults.
01:06Yes, the numbers of poverty are different according to the measurements that are made.
01:11What we wanted to do with this report, precisely, is to show the different ways of measuring poverty.
01:18There are reports from some universities that are telling us about 70%,
01:24there are others that are telling us about 40%,
01:27there are others, which are the officials, that tell us only about the food basket.
01:32The issue that we are raising in the background is that the basket of poverty
01:39is built on the basis of a middle-aged adult, sorry, of a young adult with his family.
01:47And older people, I am an older person,
01:51we have other types of needs and we also have more difficulties
01:56to access services that younger people can.
01:59A while ago we saw a young man jumping a windmill, right?
02:03Well, I couldn't.
02:05So, what we are raising is that, in addition to the fact that the food basket,
02:14today, we measure it where we measure it,
02:17it is not enough to satisfy the basic food and health needs of an older person.
02:26And this constitutes a violation of their fundamental rights, right?
02:31That is, the rights to food, the right to health,
02:35the right to a decent income, because older people have worked all their lives, right?
02:42So, it is very hard to reach old age and have to depend on the children
02:48or have to change habits of life, consolidated over so many years.
02:54Silvia, when we talk about the basic food basket for a retiree,
02:58if you want to make or form a different basic food basket,
03:03what is missing from that basket?
03:06What doesn't it have, what doesn't it contemplate?
03:09Basically, the basic food basket of an older person should contemplate essential nutrients,
03:17that is, to feed themselves with the same types of nutrients as the younger ones.
03:27On the other hand, we have the issue of access to health, which also includes the food basket.
03:34Older people have restricted almost 40% of their medication consumption.
03:40On the other hand, the food basket includes a transport measure,
03:45which, as we have just seen in the report that you presented, the number that is set for...
03:51Yes.
03:55Let's see, there we are going over some numbers, right?
03:575.2 million people earn a lower retirement age of 340,000 pesos.
04:02If we take into account that two retirees can live in a home and earn two AVERES of this type,
04:10not even with those two AVERES the basic food basket necessary to live moderately with dignity can be completed.
04:17Is that right, Silvia?
04:19Exactly, that's why, I don't know if you can hear me because I'm seeing a little sign.
04:23Perfectly, Silvia.
04:25Well, I'm right in Brazil, in a congress where we are talking about this.
04:28They haven't asked me to come and present the situation of older people in Argentina.
04:33But what we have seen, which you fortunately show behind the numbers,
04:40are the faces of poverty.
04:42They are the older people in what situation they are living.
04:47And what we have seen is that their lifestyles have changed.
04:50Older people, retirees, eat only one meal a day.
04:57There are older people in the city of La Plata, where we just did a study,
05:02who are heating themselves with firewood.
05:08They were cut off from the gas because they couldn't pay for it.
05:11There are middle-class people.
05:14Because this brutal adjustment that this government is making
05:17is not affecting only the poorest sectors.
05:20It is affecting all sectors.
05:23It is affecting you, surely.
05:25It is affecting me. It is affecting the teachers.
05:28It is affecting a person like me,
05:30who could go out to have a snack with his granddaughters every week,
05:34and who today must restrict those outings.
05:39Without a doubt, with a different level of impact on the economy,
05:42it affects us all, but we clearly know which are the most vulnerable and harmed sectors.