PHA-Exchange> Parts of US are as poor as 3rd world, UN report

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(excerpts)

> UN report : Parts of America are as poor as Third World By Paul Vallely
> 09/08/05 "The Independent" -- --

> Parts of the United States are as poor as the Third World, according to a
> shocking United Nations report on global inequality. Claims that the New
> Orleans floods have laid bare a growing racial and economic divide in the
> US have, until now, been rejected by the American political establishment
> as emotional rhetoric.
>
> But yesterday's UN report provides statistical proof that for many - well
> beyond those affected by the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina - the great
> American Dream is an ongoing nightmare. The document constitutes a
> stinging attack on US policies at home and abroad in a fightback against
> moves by Washington to undermine next week's UN 60th anniversary
> conference which will be the biggest gathering of world leaders in
> history.

> The annual Human Development Report normally concerns itself with the
> Third World, but the 2005 edition scrutinises inequalities in health
> provision inside the US as part of a survey of how inequality worldwide is
> retarding the eradication of poverty. It reveals that the infant mortality
> rate has been rising in the US for the past five years - and is now the
> same as Malaysia. America's black children are twice as likely as whites
> to die before their first birthday.

> The report is bound to incense the Bush administration as it provides
> ammunition for critics who have claimed that the fiasco following
> Hurricane Katrina shows that Washington does not care about poor black
> Americans.

> The document, which was written by Kevin Watkins, the former head of
> research at Oxfam, will be seen as round two in the battle between the UN
and the US, which regards the world body as an unnecessary constraint on
its strategic interests and actions.

> The report launched yesterday is a clear challenge to Washington. The Bush
administration wants to replace multilateral solutions to international
> problems with a world order in which the US does as it likes on a
> bilateral basis.

> Among the world's poor, infant mortality is falling at less than half of
> the world average. To tackle that means tackling inequality - a message
> towards which John Bolton and his fellow US neocons are deeply hostile.

> Inequality within countries is as stark as the gaps between countries, the
> UN says. Poverty is not the only issue here.
> The only way to eradicate poverty, it says, is to target inequalities.
> Unless that is done the Millennium Development Goals will never be met.
> And 41 million children will die unnecessarily over the next 10 years.

> Decline in health care
> Child mortality is on the rise in the United States For half a century the
> US has seen a sustained decline in the number of children who die before
> their fifth birthday. But since 2000 this trend has been reversed.
> 13 per cent of the US national income - this high level goes
> disproportionately on the care of white Americans. It has not been
> targeted to eradicate large disparities in infant death rates based on
> race, wealth and state of residence.

Countries that spend substantially less than the US have, on average, a
> healthier population. A baby boy from one of the top 5 per cent richest
> families in America will live 25 per cent longer than a boy born in the
> bottom 5 per cent.

> The US is the only wealthy country with no universal health insurance
> system. Its mix of employer-based private insurance and public coverage
> does not reach all Americans. More than one in six people of working age
> lack insurance. One in three families living below the poverty line are
> uninsured. Just 13 per cent of white Americans are uninsured, compared
> with 21 per cent of blacks and 34 per cent of Hispanic Americans.

 Child poverty rates in the United
> States are now more than 20 per cent Child poverty is a particularly
> sensitive indicator for income poverty in rich countries.  In the UK -
which
> at the end of the 1990s had one of the highest child poverty rates in
> Europe - the rise in child poverty, by contrast, has been reversed through
> increases in tax credits and benefits.
>