Poverty and American Democracy

When we look around the world, the United States lags behind most of its peer nations—other industrial democracies—in many social indicators. The latest evidence of this concerns poverty and comes from a new report by the Economic Policy Institute http://bit.ly/LVRjx9

According to this report, the US poverty rate, using an international standard of the proportion of people living in households with income below half of a nation’s median household income, is 17.3%. This percentage is the highest among the world’s industrial democracies and almost twice as high as the average poverty rate for all these nations. Our neighbor to the north, Canada, has a poverty rate of only 12%, while the United Kingdom, where the Olympics are now being held, has a rate of 11%. Denmark and Iceland have the lowest rates, under 7%.

Using this same poverty standard, 23.1% of US children live in poor households, a rate more than twice higher than the average for all democracies and almost double Canada’s rate of 13.3%.

Compounding the problem of American poverty is the fact that the United States also spends much less than its peer nations to help its poor. As the EPI report explains, “peer countries are much more likely than the United States to step in where markets and labor policy fail in order to lift their most disadvantaged citizens out of poverty.”

Why does the United States do so little to help its poor? Social research shows that Americans tend to blame the poor for being poor. This belief lowers their support for government efforts to help the poor. Because there is no great desire to help the poor, they do not get helped.

The rest of the world’s democracies are wiser than the United States. Each of these nations recognizes that its society fares better when its poor fare better. In addition to the simple moral imperative of helping “the least among us,” there is less crime when we help the poor, there is less illness and disease and lower medical spending when we help the poor, and there is a healthier economy when we help the poor. From the world’s democracies, the United States has much to learn.