Childhood Poverty In U.S. High America Has Highest Percentage Of All Industrialized Nations

The incidence of childhood poverty is higher in the United States than in any other industrialized country and government programs do less to combat it, a private anti-hunger advocacy group said Wednesday.

The report, prepared by Bread for the World, said 21.5 percent of Americans younger than 18 live in poverty. The rate in the next highest industrial country, Australia, was 14.1 percent. Finland had the lowest rate at 2.5 percent.

The report, compiled from previously published surveys, also said the United States had the second-highest gap between the incomes of its richest and poorest citizens. Only post-Communist Russia had a larger disparity.

Most of the 129-page report, timed for the U.N.-sponsored World Food Day, concentrated on problems of hunger worldwide. Predictably, it found that the highest levels of undernourishment were in developing countries of South Asia and sub-Saharan Africa. But it said more than 1 of 4 American children is habitually hungry or in danger of hunger.

“In the richest country in the world, it’s senseless to have widespread hunger among children,” said David Beckmann, president of Bread for the World, which describes itself as the largest U.S. citizens’ group against hunger.

The report based its conclusion that U.S. childhood poverty was the highest in the industrialized world on a European income study for 1990 and 1991 that defined poverty as an income at least 50 percent below the national average.

It showed Canada with the third highest level, behind the United States and Australia, at 13.5 percent. At the low end, Sweden was at 2.7 percent and Norway at 4.6 percent.

Bread for the World also said U.S. anti-poverty programs were less effective than those in other industrial countries. For instance, it said, U.S. aid programs reduced childhood poverty by 15 percent from what it would have been without them. In France, welfare programs cut the childhood poverty rate by 72 percent; in Ireland, the reduction was 60 percent.

The report said that a study conducted last year in 25 industrial countries found that the income of the richest 10 percent of Americans was 5.67 times the income of the poorest 10 percent. Only Russia at 6.84 times was higher. The narrowest gap was 2.25 times in Slovakia.

Although the focus of the report was on hunger, Marc Cohen, who edited the document, said comparisons among industrialized countries were made based on income because figures on the incidence of hunger in Europe were generally unavailable.

The report asserted that the recently enacted welfare-reform law would increase poverty and hunger in the United States.