Prevalence of Overall Poverty: We’re Number 28
The level and depth of poverty in the United States should trouble us all. Recent studies, written by sociologists Matthew Desmond and Mark Robert Rank, economist Anne Case and Angus Deaton, and economist Joseph Stiglitz, among many others, explore the depths of American poverty and its consequences. Deaton once observed that “There are millions of Americans whose suffering, through material poverty or poor health, is as bad or worse than that of the people of Africa or in Asia.” Furthermore, nearly 18 million Americans, 6 percent of the population, live in what is categorized as “deep poverty.” These individuals survive at less than one-half the official poverty rate. For single adults, that half-poverty line figure is $6,380; for a family of four, it is $13,100.
When comparing the poverty rates among the OECD countries, we find that the United States is the definite outlier. It has the highest percentage of overall poverty (15.1 percent) and the highest rate of child poverty (20.9 percent). Using 2019 data, the average overall poverty rate among OECD countries is 10.7 percent; the average child (ages 0 to 17 years old) poverty rate among the 25 OECD countries is 11.7 percent.
Of the 28 countries surveyed, the United States is the outlier, ranked as 28th.
Sources: Matthew Desmond, Poverty, By America; Mark Robert Rank, The Poverty Paradox: Understanding Economic Hardship Amid American Prosperity (New York: Oxford University Press, 2023); Anne Case and Angus Deaton, Death of Despair and the Future of Capitalism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021); Sitglitz, The Price of Inequality. “America’s Poor Are Worse Off Than Elsewhere,” Confronting Poverty, n.d., https://confrontingpoverty.org/poverty-facts-and-myths/americas-poor-are-worse-off-than-elsewhere/ (accessed March 22, 2023). Statistica, https://www.statista.com/statistics/233910/poverty-rates-in-oecd-countries.
