USA, USA, USA: Second in Child Poverty among "Developed Countries"

For real, the US ranks second above Latvia, Bulgaria, Spain, Greece, and 29 other countries. Romania is the only country to rank above us on this list. I have some problems with the language, particularly "developed", but the fact remains that this was put out by UNICEF so it is pretty complete. We outrank countries on life support like Greece...

The US has 23.1 percent of out children living in poverty. This refers to the relative poverty rate of children living in households where disposable income is less than half of the national median income. Some critics cite issue with this term and the definition. Of course the measurement has some weaknesses: children's well-being don't always correspond to their guardians' income and comparing relative poverty rates don't make sense unless the countries have similar median incomes. The researchers provided a list of 14 items found in most middle-class households and counted the number of children whose families couldn't afford them.

This was flawed too, but the end result for me is that we allow children to remain in poverty, we continue to force their guardians off welfare, and cut social benefit programs. We just accept that children live in poverty, or we just don't care at all, or perhaps worst of all we just don't know.