Argentina's Mileise: Infant mortality and other vital statistics deteriorate markedly in 2024
Data published on Friday by Argentina's Health Statistics and Information Directorate (DEIS) shows a marked deterioration during 2024 in all major vital statistics for the South American nation of 47 million.
The shift, which breaks over 50 years of nearly-uninterrupted improvements in national health indicators for Argentina, came amid deep budget cuts in health and education during far-right President Javier Milei's first year in office - enacted largely by decree.
Public health observers were especially worried by a worsening infant mortality rate - which rose from 8.0 to 8.5 per 1,000 live births (compared to 5.5 in the U.S. and 6.2 in neighboring Chile and Uruguay).
The 6.3% jump was the highest such increase since 1970 - when similar cuts to public health budgets by the right-wing dictatorship of Gen. Juan Carlos Onganía triggered a nationwide strike by public-sector medical staff.
Maternal mortality rose even more sharply: from 31.9 per 100,000 live births to 44.3 - far higher than the 17.9 recorded in the U.S. (itself the highest in the developed world).
Overall death rates rose as well, with registered deaths rising by 6.5% - the sharpest rise, excluding the height of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020-21, since 2007.
Much of the increase came from respiratory (14.5%) and circulatory (5.7%) causes - though a sharp rise (10.4%) was also noted in septicemia deaths; COVID-19 deaths, on the other hand, fell by 64.5% to just 791 as the pandemic wound down.
Critics note a two-thirds reduction in the number of basic medicine kits distributed to needy seniors under the REMEDIAR program during Milei's first two years in office.
Empty cribs
Birth rates, in turn, declined sharply in 2024 - intensifying a trend that began in 2016, after right-wing President Mauricio Macri slashed transport, public utility and educational subsides.
Registered births plummeted by 10.4% - far steeper than the 6.2% average decline seen during the country's birth dearth since then.
The number of total births (413,135) was the lowest since 1948 - with birth rates in 2024 (8.9 per 1,000 population) a mere half of their 2015 levels, and well below the 10.6 recorded in the U.S.
The Argentine population's natural increase - the difference between births and deaths - thus plunged to levels not seen since the 19th century: just 36,730 - a fry cry from the 419,000 annual average between 1975 and 2015.
Argentina's National Population Directorate estimates that the country's 2025 population (46,735,000) was nearly 300,000 less than the 2023 total - owing to a 20% decline in the number of foreign-born residents since then.
Around 600,000 registered jobs have been lost since Milei was elected in November 2023.
At: https://www-pagina12-com-ar.translate.goog/2026/01/31/cuando-el-estado-se-retira-la-salud-es-lo-primero-que-se-pierde/?_x_tr_sl=es&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp
And: https://www.argentina.gob.ar/sites/default/files/serie_5_nro_68_anuario_vitales_2024_v2.pdf
Argentine senior citizens in Buenos Aires protest earlier this month over the declining real value of their pensions, which average under US$300 a month.
Cuts to federal prescription subsidies and public health, along with a decade-long slide in real wages (with minimum wages losing 60% of their real value), have combined to slash birth rates in half since 2015 while death rates have creeped upward - a birth dearth comparable to Eastern Bloc countries during the 1990s, and among the sharpest in recorded history.
Argentina's population, according to its own statistical authorities, is now declining.
