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Articles: News | US has highest poverty..!
- Mr. Ravi Kumar Sunkara
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New York: Despite being the wealthiest country in the world with highest per capita income levels, the US also has one of the highest incidences of poverty among the rich industrialised nations, says a UN expert.
Arjun Sengupta, a well-known Indian economist, a former ambassador and an independent expert on human rights at the UN Commission on Human Rights, said here: 'Despite a multitude of federal and state social benefit systems in the US, a number of problems ranging from the high cost of healthcare to lack of low-cost housing impede people struggling to get out of poverty and can been seen as a human rights abuse.
UN statistics show that 12.7 per cent (or 37 million) of the population lived in poverty in 2004, while 15.7 per cent (45.8 million) were without health insurance coverage and 11.9 per cent of households (38.2 million people, including 13.9 million children) experienced food insecurity.
'Resource constraints have limited the reach of the assistance programmes and social discrimination has aggravated the problems in many situations, resulting in poverty clearly seen as a violation of human rights,' Sengupta declared.
'The case of the US was particularly interesting as it presented an apparent paradox: as the wealthiest country on earth, with higher per capita income levels than any other country, the US also had one of the highest incidences of poverty among the rich industrialised nations,' Sengupta said.
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