Yesterday, the United Nations released a report on global inequality. Within this paper were shocking revelations that quantatively reveal the socioeconomic inequalities in American society. The report concludes that parts of America are as poor as the Third World. With the current debate surrounding Katrina, the timing of this report serves as further proof of a disfunctional society that the Neocon spin machine cannot deny.
Some of the highlights, or
lowlights, as the case may be:
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. But the 370-page document is critical of American policies towards poverty abroad as well as at home. And, in unusually outspoken language, it accuses the US of having "an overdeveloped military strategy and an under-developed strategy for human security".
"There is an urgent need to develop a collective security framework that goes beyond military responses to terrorism," it continues. " Poverty and social breakdown are core components of the global security threat."
The Great Society:
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.
Although the US leads the world in healthcare spending - per head of population it spends twice what other rich OECD nations spend on average, 13 per cent of its 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.
Health care is the clearest signal of how a society views the collective well being:
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. Being born into an uninsured household increases the probability of death before the age of one by about 50 per cent.
Child Poverty:
The US - with Mexico - has the dubious distinction of seeing its child poverty rates increase to more than 20 per cent. 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.
I don't suspect any of these findings come as a surprise to many around here- it has been discussed relentlessly. But this report, coupled with the stark reality of the Katrina tragedy, now demonstrates to the world that America is a paper tiger when it comes to the ideals of equality and liberty we are so quick to expouse. The world is watching, and it ain't pretty. We are witnessing the wane of a supposed superpower.
