North America

The US poverty line is a more and more irrelevant measure of the national poverty level – just like any other poverty line these days – and is increasingly criticized even by official agencies. Poverty lines are flawed and prone to manipulation for all sorts of political reasons; they’re also inappropriate at the national level because they do not account of the radical differences between different regions of a country, especially between cities and rural areas.

In the history of social assistance, the US welfare state was always met with a lot of opposition, maybe more than in other advanced economies. Several decades ago, it seemed to a majority of politicians to be an unsustainable economic aberration. But many economists today affirm that wealth redistribution policies – though not always in the form of pure welfare – make sense for the greater good and to foster the capabilities of all citizens.

In the latest 2011 report, the Census Bureau counted over 49 million people living in poverty in the United States. And the more poverty there is, the more it affects the economy and productivity. But if the economy is down, the number of jobs is shrinking too and so poverty in the US keeps on getting worse.

Looking at poverty in the American continent is essential to better understand how the former colonies have evolved into radically different countries. Country by country, analyzing the social and economic paths taken, we can see the effects of discrimination, land ownership, wealth distribution & corruption.