Only ROMANIA has a higher child poverty rate than the U.S.

[Triana]

There is no excuse for such immorality in as rich a nation as this. The Pope is right. People are obsessed with gays, contraception, abortion -- and they're forgetting and distracting attention from the REAL moral issues our nation and our world face.

[Egalitarian Thug]

1. They're not old enough to vote and too young to kill the people we hate.

Fuck them.































































you idiots

[AAO]

2. Woohoo! We kicked Romanian ass! USA, USA!

[blkmusclmachine]

3. GOPee Definition of Freedom: Nothing Left to Lose

[nomorenomore08]

4. Just wondering: if Romania is included under "rich countries" then why not Russia?

Russia has a considerably higher per-capita GDP and a comparable HDI.

[AAO]

5. Russia won't reveal their data.

[nomorenomore08]

9. Ahh, I see. Wasn't aware of that.

[Quantess]

10. It appears to be EU countries compared to the US and Canada

I was wondering about Japan.

[7962]

6. Lets develop a study that will make the US look bad!

Thats pretty much all this is.

[Quantess]

7. Uh, yeah.... you wish.

Sorry to break it to you. Denial is one of the early stages of processing really bad news.

I'm here living in a small european country, to tell you that life for children really is better here.

I work in a school here in a racially mixed suburb, and I have worked in schools in the USA in racially mixed and mostly white suburbs. Who am I going to believe? My own lying eyes?

[Bluenorthwest]

17. Which 'small European country'? Yours is the second post in about 15 minutes I have read

that says 'I am live in a mystery land I will not name but still wish to characterize'. I don't get it. At all. Why be coy? I really don't get it.

[FBaggins]

21. Sweden

Which absolutely does have a lower rate of childhood poverty than the US.

But that doesn't make this survey legit. There are plenty of countries on that list where kids near the median have lower standards of living than some of the kids that are "living in poverty" by this artificial measure.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

34. Yes, but Sweden has a lower rate of childhood poverty than most other places too.

[FBaggins]

20. Nope... that's exactly what it is.

The definition of "poverty" is entirely arbitrary and tells you nothing about the standard of living involved.

Lives in a family with an income below half of the national median? Half the national median is about $26,000/year. That's by no means wealthy, but it's also far from "living in poverty" in most areas of the country.

Take a look at the country just below us on the list. Latvia (during the time of this data) had 20% unemployment and rapidly declining incomes as their GDP was eroded substantially. It wasn't just the people who made half of the median income that were struggling... but they're the only ones that this counts as "living in poverty".

The real problem is that there are two ways of looking at "poverty" one is relative and leaves you with lots of "poor" people even if incomes skyrocket (and few poor people when incomes are universally lousy). The more relevant definition is based on a standard of living, rather than a comparison to how others are living.

There's no question, for instance, that the kids on the bubble here in the US have a very different standard of living than a whole bunch of kids in some of the former soviet republics who didn't get counted as poor. Estonia (one of the "Baltic Tigers&quot has a median income less than half of that poverty line here in the US. Yet somehow their child poverty rate is less than half of that in the US by this measure?

[Niceguy1]

29. it iis quite

Clear the intent is to make the US look bad.

[Democracyinkind]

8. "Science is only true when I agree with it"

[7962]

12. The fact is, the poverty RATE hasnt changed much in 50 yrs. Facts are facts.

And as a % of population, there are far less people in poverty today than when poverty started to be measured. Another fact.
Our poverty rate is comparable to that of France, yet they are 18th on this chart. I think I trust the Census Bureau a little more than the UN. The same folks who put Sudan on the Human Rights Commission. Along with Libya. And Syria almost made it.
This chart shows "percentage of children ..living in households whose income is less than 50% of the national median". That doesnt make you "poor". 25K a yr is tough in NYC, its doable in Iowa. It depends on where you live. Does this chart account for food assistance programs? No. Section 8? No. Its not poor where I live either. I know several people who live on that income. They're not living it up by any means, but they're getting by. I live next door to a family of 5 who MAY make 25k a yr.
I'm just tired of the US always being portrayed as some country where everybody is doing bad. You can skew your findings by simply tailoring your questions or figures a certain way to get any result you want. Or simply stating it as this chart does. Remember when the GOP had a "survey" where a majority of people wanted tax cuts? Bullshit.
We have the fattest poor people on earth. And yes, I know being overweight can be a result of not eating good foods. We also have a hell of a lot of fat rich people too. Parents make food choices for their kids.
Of course there are kids and families who do not have food on the table on a regular basis; I'm fully aware of that. I would bet they are mostly in rural areas where there aren't as many food programs, church programs etc, to pull from. But throwing out charts like this means little in reality. DU is starting to look like Facebook. Everyone posts stuff and its treated as gospel.

[Quantess]

14. The CIA.gov says US has more than double France's poverty rate.

www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/fields/2046.html

[7962]

26. OK, using your source we're about the same as England, Belgium, Denmark, etc

I used the US Census data. Either way, we're not the hellhole many like to portray.

[Democracyinkind]

15. Deny it all you want, these kids grow up in poverty.

It is obvious that a list that has Denmark and Switzerland in it is not dealing with subsaharan style existential poverty but rather a distinct form of first world poverty which might look quite comfortable when compared to the poorest countries in the world. That does not mean that any of us would switch places with them or that their plight should mean less to us just because they're not starving in some Sudanese refugee camp.

As to your last observation, yes DU is changing. Not into Facebook but into Free Republic. Pointing out that our poor are actually quite well off... Is not something I have ever read on DU before without it being seriously opposed.

[7962]

28. Regarding your last comment, the day is young! Give it time.

[Igel]

38. And won't ever, not appreciably.

Because one definition is that poverty is the lowest X% of the population.

It's like saying that the average IQ is 100. When the average gets much away from 100, the test is renormed so that average is again 100.


Last time I dug into the numbers, though, I found something annoying. In Sweden, you have a high poverty rate that is ameliorated by government programs. This social spending counts as income--assistance for housing, for utilities, for food, etc., etc.

In the US none of this counts as income. A poor family gets free healthcare, food stamps and other food assistance, help with utilities, housing subsidies, and that's not income. It's like comparing apples and elephants.

[7962]

40. Excellent point. I tried to point that out earlier, but you did it much better than I.

[Donald Ian Rankin]

36. The data handling here may well be fine, it's the labelling that's screwy.

It would not in the least surprise me if America had an unusually high fraction of children living on less than a low fraction of the median national income.

But that's a poor definition of poverty to pick for international comparisons. The right definition of poverty to compare apples with apples is not "income divided by national median income" but "income divided by cost of living".

Median income is not an absurd thing to divide by, because it probably correlates with cost of living, but it's not the same thing, and in particular I suspect that America has a relatively high ratio of median income to cost of living - which is a good thing to have - and the reason it scores so badly here is at least partly because of that, rather than because it has an exceptionally high number of children living in objectively poor conditions - which would be a bad thing to have.

[hfojvt]

30. nailed it

I was about to post about how absurd this chart is

Poverty is defined as "less than half the median income". Thus the US by having a higher median income suddenly has a higher poverty rate than Hungary.

I cannot find Hungary's median income, but US per capita income $50,700 is about the same as its median household income. If the same is true for Hungary, then their median income is $20,000.

So children in Hungary living on MORE than half their median income $11,000 a year would be considered "not poor" by this chart. Whereas children living in the US on less than half of our median income $24,000 would be considered "in poverty".

$24,000 is "poor" in the US
$11,000 is "not poor" in Hungary.

Surprise, surprise, surprise, the US - by that absurd definition - has a higher childhood poverty rate than Hungary.

To deny that is to deny "science" or "truth".

Now it is true that there are countries which have higher per capita income than the US. They are
Qatar, Luxembourg, Singapore, Norway, Brunei, and Hong Kong.

Switzerland, Canada, Australia, Austria, The Netherlands, Ireland and Sweden are fairly close and perhaps "collectively richer" if less of their national income goes to the top 10%.

[Comrade Grumpy]

35. I assume costs of goods and services has been factored in?

I would think many things are cheaper in Hungary than in the US.

[hfojvt]

37. per capita GDP is equated using Purchasing Power Parity

or PPP. So the $24,000 is supposed to be the same by PPP as the $11,000.

Given the "science" of economics, it would be a safe bet that there are some inadequacies involved in PPP.

I met a very pretty Hungarian girl once. She was using my laundromat with another African girl. She said they had no laundromats in Hungary. Which I found to be surprising since laundromats are services for people who cannot afford their own washer. But I had to show them how to use the washing machines. So perhaps they not only did not have laundromats, they also did not have very many washing machines.

[mnhtnbb]

11. Going for the GOLD!

Wouldn't Jesus be proud!

[woo me with science]

13. The first time I saw this posted, one of the replies said

that Romania previously hadn't even been on the list of "rich" countries. The poster suspected it had been added to save the US the embarrassment of being last.

I don't know if that's true or not, but this list is for damned sure an indictment of our corrupt government and its priorities.

K&R

[Democracyinkind]

16. Romania is most distincly not a first world nation.

It is on a (neoliberal) treatment and things are getting better, especially since fully joining the EU. But putting it in a category with Switzerland and the Scandinavian countries surely makes it stand out as an outlier.

[elehhhhna]

18. true - I have a client who operates there.

Get out of the cities and you have starving elderly etc. driving wood-wheeled oxcarts. for real. No retirement, no social safety net.

Surprised to see Canada in the top (bottom) 10...

[Democracyinkind]

22. I was very surprised by seeing Seitzerland and thought something is wrong.

I live here and it's hard to associate this country with poverty. But suffice it to say that the kids of people making substantially less than the median income will grow up with many needs not taken care of. It goes to show that a country can be filthy rich and still have poverty issues. It's more about income desparatiy than it is about poverty.

Thank you for expanding on my comment.

[elehhhhna]

23. I'm not a statistician but I think

the wackier looking sentries simply have much less divergence between the highest income and the lowest, thus putting more kids in the bottom 50%. Does that even make sense? If incomes are flatter, more people are in the middle?

[7962]

27. Thats kind of what I said above; it's a subjective chart. (IMO)

[Posteritatis]

31. Well, y'know, Harper. 2015 can't get here soon enough. (nt)

[hfojvt]

33. Romania has a per capita GDP of $13,000

according to the CIA.

Not THAT much worse than Hungary at $20,000, but look how few Hungarian children are living in poverty.

It must help if you define poverty down for poor countries and up for richer countries.

[etherealtruth]

19. The teabaggers are striving for #1

The latest round of cuts to "food stamps" will make sure

[woo me with science]

24. So, apparently are corporate Democrats,

with TPP, austerity budgets, and "Grand Bargains."

[BOG PERSON]

25. how do we stack up against albania though?

[Donald Ian Rankin]

32. I doubt this is actually measuring or comparing poverty, because of the division by median.

If you artificially divide out by the national median income, you're not really comparing li

It's not an absurd thing to do - the correct thing to divide out by is cost of living, which is probably positively correlated with median income.

But unless you've got some evidence that that correlation is very strong indeed - and I'm betting that the reverse is true, and it it's quite weak - then this is not actually measuring poverty, it's measuring a form of inequality.

In particular, I think it likely that America's low score has as much or more to do with a high income per cost of living at the median than a low income per cost of living at the bottom.

[indepat]

39. If only our President and the Democratic Party realized the forces that have come together

and being perpetuated to have brought the U.S. to the penultimate crappiest economic system (government) (and fastly becoming crappiest place to live for countless tens of millions?) in the world. If only our government had any power over the forces contributing to this widespread poverty.