Third World

As I've said before, we are the Third World. Here's The Independent's (subscription only) article on the UN report on US poverty ignored by the US media, reprinted in full at democrats.com (thanks to This Old Brit).

See also here (UN Human Development Report 2005). See also this.

And this from 2000:

Significantly, the report found that the United States has one of the highest rates of relative child poverty of all OECD members. In the US, 22.4 percent of children live in poverty, a number second only to Mexico, with 26.2 percent. Countries with high rates also include: Italy (20.5 percent), the United Kingdom (19.8 percent) and Turkey (19.7 percent). Countries with slightly lower poverty rates include: Canada (15.5 percent), Australia (12.6 percent), Germany (10.7 percent) and Hungary (10.3 percent). The lowest levels of child poverty are to be found in countries with relatively high social expenditures, including: France (7.9 percent), Finland (4.4 percent) and Sweden (2.6 percent).

The report points out that the position of most countries is not changed significantly when absolute, rather than relative poverty is measured. The United States moves to the middle of the distribution, while the former Stalinist countries that have joined the OECD (Czech Republic, Hungary and Poland) have very high levels.