Argentina: A Developing Country Overview

Argentina is a country located in South America. It covers most of the southern portion of the continent. Argentina is ranking 8th in regard to the largest countries in the world. Argentinians are surrounded by immense deserts, tundra, forests, mountains as well as rivers and extreme lengths of shoreline. Not only does Argentina own an enormous part of America but they also claim a portion of Antarctica and several islands in the south pacific.

Location

Argentina is located mainly on the southern border of south America. It is the second largest country in the continent after Brazil, taking up 2,780,400 km of land. Argentina is surrounded by the Andes mountains and Chile to the west. Argentina borders on the Republic of Chile, the Republic of Bolivia, the Republic of Paraguay, the Federal Republic of Brazil, the Oriental Republic of Uruguay and the Atlantic Ocean (Geographic, 2020).

Save your time!
We can take care of your essay

• Proper editing and formatting
• Free revision, title page, and bibliography
• Flexible prices and money-back guarantee

Place an order

Way of Life in Argentina

Living in a developing country like Argentina can be quite beneficial. This is because Argentina features more productive agricultural sectors, higher value services, and higher per capita consumption. Argentinians benefit from the rich natural resources, high literate population and an export-oriented agricultural sector.

Nutrition Status

The nutrition status in Argentina is quite poor, ranging from stunting growth to anemia. 32% of infants under 6 months are breastfed which is quite low in regard to other countries. Argentina’s under-five overweight percentage and under-five stunting percentage do come across high but are actually extremely less than the average developing country. The adult population face a malnutrition burden with 18.6% of women facing anemia and 9.9% of males facing diabetes, as well as 29% of women and 27.3% of men having obesity.

Current Healthcare System

Argentina’s health system is commonly known as the best health system in Latin America. Big cities across the country have some of the best hospitals and clinics, but in the poorer north, healthcare can be different and lack equipment or staff.

The healthcare in Argentina is split into three different sectors known as: the public sector, social security and private sector. The public health system is administered by the residents of each area for the purpose of providing public services to the community. This is very different to other countries like Australia whom have all healthcare run by the government. Like many other countries, Argentina’s public sector provides free healthcare to around 50% of people, this includes both nationals and foreigners. The long waiting lists for the public sector is the reason that other health sectors are more likely to be chosen. The social security health sector is financed by fixed fee contributions from employers and employees, these health insurance schemes are managed by trade unions and are the most common form of health insurance in the country. The patient covers the difference in cost between the fixed fee and the cost of treatment. The final health sector is the private health sector, these policies are the same as normal private insurance policies which anyone can choose to have. The private sector is the least common chosen option and only around 5% of the population chooses private health insurance.

Wealthy Vs Poor Healthcare

Argentina’s health system has much better healthcare for the wealthy rather than the poor. This is because of the more sufficient and reliable equipment that the wealthy has to offer whether as areas like Andean north west doesn’t have much equipment at all and also suffers from a lack of staff. For these reasons the poor cities have to deal with a less developed healthcare system.

How the System Can Be Managed

This healthcare system can be adjusted and fixed by sharing the resources that the wealthy side of Argentina has with the less fortunate side of Argentina. Other countries can also help by sending in devices and even people to help fix the system. Argentina has already become a popular destination for medical tourists who travel for procedures like cosmetic surgery and other esthetical procedures. They are in the middle of processing modernization across the country which will advantage both the fortunate and less fortunate areas in Argentina.

Human Development in Argentina

Human development in Argentina has recently improved greatly from what it used to be like. The key issues that make human development struggle within Argentina include:

1. Inequality. The inequality in Argentina is a big issue that is measured using the IHDI (inequality human development index). As the inequality within the country increases so does the loss of human development meaning the country gets ranked lower and lower every time the inequality rises. Argentina’s HDI in 2018 was 0.830 but when the inequality got discounted it got lowered to 0.714, which was a 14.0% loss just because of the poor equality in the country.
2. Gender development. It is the idea of gender equality measured in three different areas in life. These include; health, education, and command over economic resources. The GDI (gender development index) is what measures this, in 2018 the GDI value for Argentina was 0.988 which put the country in Group 1 meaning that Argentina had the highest value of human development which was a big accomplishment for Argentina as they had struggled terrifically in the past.
3. Gender inequality. As of 2018, Argentina has a GII (gender inequality index) quality of 0.354 ranking it 77 out of 162 countries, which is quite high especially since it is the 21st century, this than shows gender equality still hasn’t been achieved.

These issues play a massive role in nearly every country across the globe and affect them just how they are affecting Argentina, but for Argentina it’s creating a barrier from further progressing human development within the country.

Issues Within Argentina

Economic Crisis

In 2001, Argentinians found themselves in an awful economic crisis which put the country in a lot of strife and created a very long, emotional few years for the country. This cleared up for a while but then recently Argentina had fallen back into the crisis and become the recipient of support from the International Monetary fund. Argentina’s financial and economic authorities have made mistakes that have pushed the country to go back to where they were over 10 years ago. The crisis is only creating more and more problems towards the development of the country and a main part of it is because of the excessive government spending and wide spread corruption that is being shown.

Inequality Throughout the Country

Argentina’s inequality ranks on the third most unequal countries in the world. It is noticed all around the country that the rich are getting richer and the poorer are getting poorer meaning that the inequality is only getting worse. On top of this there is the inequality of genders and races, and it is understandable that all across the globe there will be inequality but for a developing country that isn’t overly massive and has quite a good government, issues like these can be prevented if the time and effort was made.

Poverty

Argentina’s poverty rates are only getting worse and many organizations are noticing it. In 2017, The observatory of social debt at the catholic university of Argentina released a report that placed Argentina’s poverty rate at 32.9%. At that time, the country’s population was around 43.9 million which means that about 13.8 million Argentines were living in poverty. This is an extremely high percentage of people suffering from poverty in such a wealthy country, proving that the inequality is not getting any better.

Helping These Issues

Preventing these issues will be a struggle and will take a lot of time and patience, but in saying this, at the end of the day the life for the Argentines will be a lot more promising and easier. Not only will it be better for the civilization, but it will also improve their rates of mortality, poverty, inequality, which will push them to rise to a fully developed country. The economic side of things needs to make a massive change from what they are now, this is because more than 50% of workers are getting less than half their minimum wage which would put them in serious trouble if they were in any other developed country, changing this will than change the poverty rates in the country as well as get the crisis-caused side of things back on track. A policy should be put in place for people to avoid public spending as much as possible so by bringing down inflation, reducing the fiscal deficit and improving access to credit it will allow Argentina to cancel out energy subsidies while protecting the poorer households, rationalize public employment and bring about further cost savings in state-owned enterprises.

Tertiary Extended Response

Morbidity and Mortality

The morbidity and mortality rates in Argentina have changed extensively over the past 50 years. The population had grown by 32.7% from 1990-2014 with the population reaching 42.7 million, the country’s civilization has become aged and the structure has been stationary. In 2015 the maternal mortality was 3.9 per 10,000 live births with the main cause of death being hemorrhages, hypertension, infections, and miscarriage. In 2014, 325,539 deaths were recorded, for an overall mortality rate of 7.6 deaths per 1,000 population. Between 2010 and 2014, mortality from cardiovascular diseases and neoplasms declined by 13% and 2.5%, while mortality from infectious diseases and external causes increased by 5.5% and 3.4%. This is because of the decline of cardiovascular diseases around the country which than changed to an increase of infectious life-threatening diseases.

Life Expectancy

The life expectancy in 2015 ranged from 76-81 with the average woman dying at 80.4yrs old and the average man at 72.8, this has changed quite a bit over 50 years as in 1968 the life expectancy of Argentinians was only around 65 years old.

Conclusion

Life expectancy in Argentina has improved greatly and has risen as much as other developed countries such as the UK or Oceania countries. This shows tremendous progression, but it doesn’t change the fact that the country still suffers from high mortality rates from issues that can be prevented. To improve the human development in Argentina, hospitals and medical centers need to have priority and be given what they deserve, as well as this there needs to be ways for the population getting affected by the diseases to seek professional and urgent medical help so the mortality rates can decrease. Equality across the country needs to come into plan immediately for Argentina’s human development and overall country’s development to progress and improve.

References and Resources

1. Global Nutrition Report. 2020. Argentina Nutrition Profile - Global Nutrition Report. [online] [Accessed 13 August 2020].
2. El-Erian, M., 2020. Argentina's Economic Crisis Is the Result of Avoidable Mistakes. [online] the Guardian. [Accessed 13 August 2020].
3. Friesen, G., 2020. Cry For Me, Argentina: Why a Great Nation Keeps Jumping from One Economic Crisis to Another. [online] Forbes. [Accessed 13 August 2020].
4. Nations, U. Development Programme. 2020. [online] [Accessed 13 August 2020].
5. Development Report., 2020. Technical Notes. [online] human development indices. [Accessed 13 August 2020].
6. Hdr.undp.org. 2020. Inequalities in Human Development. [online] [Accessed 13 August 2020].
7. Sumple, J., Opdyke, J., Murnane, R., Bauche, Y., Casey, K., Bauche, Y., Casey, K., Casey, K. and Casey, K., 2020. Argentina: Everything You Need to Know in 2020 - International Living. [online] International Living. [Accessed 13 August 2020].
8. Higgins, S., 2020. 7 Reasons Why Argentina Is the Best Place to Live. [online] Culture Trip. [Accessed 13 August 2020].
9. GiveWell. 2020. Standard of Living In the Developing World | Givewell. [online] [Accessed 13 August 2020].
10. Data.worldbank.org. 2020. Life Expectancy at Birth, Total (Years) - Argentina | Data. [online] [Accessed 13 August 2020].
11. Macrotrends.net. 2020. Argentina Death Rate 1950-2020. [online] [Accessed 13 August 2020].