The extreme poverty crisis in the US, where four million people live on less than $3 a day, is directly traceable to policy loopholes and structural choices. Cuts to safety-net programs and tax legislation that favors high-income earners have created a political environment that systematically deepens inequality.
This stands in stark relief against China’s historic achievement in eliminating extreme poverty for nearly a billion people over the same three-decade period. The US, with its world-leading productivity, has simply chosen a path of wealth concentration.
The result is a middle-class squeeze and an ever-smaller piece of the national income pie for the poor. The bottom 10% of Americans receive a mere 1.8% of the total income, a share that is statistically worse than low-income groups in several developing nations.
