When there is stability, is there confidence in the weight?
Currency not only fulfills an economic function: it also constitutes a social and political institution that organizes collective life, according to the report “ UNSAM Index of Social Trust in Currency (ICSM) ”. Multiple forms of trust are articulated around it: trust in the State and its capacity to guarantee stability (vertical trust), trust among citizens themselves (horizontal trust), and trust regarding the individual and collective future (future trust).
Analyzing confidence in currency thus allows us to understand much more than perceptions about the value of money. It allows us to observe the foundations of social cohesion, state legitimacy, and expectations of progress that sustain—or weaken—the link between economy and society.
In Argentina, building lasting confidence in the peso has been a historical challenge. Recurring currency crises, informal dollarization processes, and the expansion of digital alternatives have created a scenario in which monetary stability becomes a barometer of political and institutional confidence. When the currency weakens, so do certainties about the future and the state's capacity to exercise economic authority.
Given this, it is essential to have instruments that systematically measure how citizens perceive their currency and what effects these perceptions have on economic and social life. Until now, the country lacked a tool that allowed for the regular and empirically grounded observation of the evolution of this confidence.
The UNSAM Social Confidence in Currency Index (ICSM) was created to fill this gap. Its purpose is to periodically monitor the population's attitudes, expectations, and behaviors toward the national currency and link them to broader dimensions of trust in institutions, government, and the social fabric. Through successive measurements, the ICSM seeks to construct a time series that allows for the detection of trends and correlations with key phenomena in public life—such as inflation, savings, consumption, and political preferences—thus providing an empirical basis for academic research and public policy design.
This report presents the results of the measurement corresponding to October 2025. This new edition expands on the approach established in the first survey, focusing on:
a. the unequal distribution of confidence among the different functions of currency;
b. differences according to gender, age, socioeconomic level and region;
c. the relationship between monetary confidence and inflationary expectations; and
d. the links between confidence in the currency, social cohesion, institutional trust and future projections.
