Poverty States-side

Hunger Free America produced a national report in November 2017, declaring “approximately 15 million American adults lived in food insecure households with at least one person employed in the years 2014 to 2016.” States with higher minimum wages had lower levels of food insecurity among working people. The states with the highest rates of food insecurity among working adults were New Mexico (15.3 percent), Mississippi (14.0 percent), Louisiana (14.0 percent), Arkansas (13.5 percent), and Maine (12.9 percent).

• In terms of access to water and sanitation, the US ranks 36th in the world.
• America has the highest incarceration rate in the world, ahead of Turkmenistan, El Salvador, Cuba, Thailand, and the Russian Federation. Its rate is nearly five times the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) average.
• The youth poverty rate in the United States is the highest across the OECD with one quarter of youth living in poverty, compared to less than 14 percent across the OECD.
• The Stanford Center on Inequality and Poverty ranks the most well-off countries in terms of labor markets, poverty, safety net, wealth inequality, and economic mobility. The US comes in last of the top 10 most well-off countries, and 18th amongst the top 21.
• In the OECD, the US ranks 35th out of 37 in terms of poverty and inequality.
• According to the World Income Inequality Database, the US has the highest Gini rate (measuring inequality) of all Western Countries
• The Stanford Center on Poverty and Inequality characterizes the US as “a clear and constant outlier in the child poverty league.”