Study: Poverty in U.S. ‘deeply disturbing’
By Karen Kaplan, Los Angeles Times
The United States is one of the richest countries in the world, but it would look dramatically different if its 50 states were organized according to income instead of geography.
If that were the case, residents of the poorest state in the union would have a median household income that’s just above the federal poverty line for a family of four. They would also expect to live shorter lives than people in more than half of the world’s countries.
It’s not a pretty picture, according to the researchers who carried out this thought experiment.
“In essence, there are several developing countries hidden within the borders of the United States — regions defined, in this case, by poverty,” they wrote in a study published Thursday in the American Journal of Public Health. “The ‘state’ of poverty in this country is dramatic and deeply disturbing.”