Most of the Americans die of poverty than homicides

An article from the University of California was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in April of this year, which emphasizes that in 2019, poverty in the United States left about 183,000 dead.

The analysis found that only heart disease, cancer, and smoking were associated with a greater number of deaths than poverty. Obesity, diabetes, drug overdoses, suicides, firearms, and homicides, among other common causes of death, were less lethal than poverty.

“Poverty kills as much as dementia, accidents, stroke, Alzheimer’s, and diabetes,” said David Brady, the study’s lead author and a UCR professor of public policy. “Poverty silently killed 10 times as many people as all the homicides in 2019. And yet, homicide firearms and suicide get vastly more attention.”

Another finding is that people living in poverty – those with incomes less than 50% of the U.S. median income — have roughly the same survival rates until they hit their 40s, after which they die at significantly higher rates than people with more adequate incomes and resources.

This research emphasizes that religious, ethnic and racial minorities in America are much more exposed to poverty than other classes of American society and their life expectancy is lower than other American citizens.

On the other hand, the New York Times published a report on persisting poverty in the United States and the accumulation of wealth and prosperity for the wealthy, noting that one third of the country’s people live in households making less than $55,000 and face many economic problems.

As per the poverty criteria in the United States, which includes government assistance and living expenses, in 2021, one out of every 25 American citizens aged 65 and over lived in absolute poverty, which means that they had to at least double their income to get out of this situation.

This is despite the fact that in 2019, amidst the Covid-19 pandemic, America’s child poverty rate was nearly twice that of many countries such as Canada, South Korea, and Germany.

The New York Times report added that it is not possible to eradicate poverty in the United States, because many citizens of this country have been suffering from it for a long time.

The US government defends huge tax breaks that go to wealthy Americans and conveniently ignores hunger and poverty reduction programs.

The American government builds and defends exclusive communities, corrals the poor and forces them to live in concentrated neighborhoods without amenities.

Most Americans, both liberal and conservative, now believe that the American people live in poverty, because they face many obstacles and challenges in life to achieve prosperity and security, and many of these obstacles and challenges have been created by us and we either willingly or unwillingly help to maintain them, and this means that the rich are getting richer and the poor are getting poorer.

The governments that have come to power in America, whether they are Democrats or Republicans, have only claimed to fight against poverty or racism, but in practice, with their policies, they have deepened these two phenomena in American society, and an example of that is the existence of poor and wealthy neighborhoods in all American cities.

Although the United States leads in wealth, knowledge and technology in the world, 40 million of its citizens live in poverty. Of these, 18.5 million people are in extreme poverty and 5.3 million live in absolute poverty.

According to official statistics, 12.7% of the American people live in poverty, unofficial statistics announce this figure to be 18%.

Among the members of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), America has the highest rate of poverty among young people and one of the lowest rates of participation in elections.