radford@calgary.UUCP (Radford Neal) (03/25/86)
Tom Keller writes: > Radford Neal writes: > > By what possible > > standard can the majority of the children in one of the richest > > countries in the world be poor? ... > > I suggest that you look up the statistics on infant mortality in the > world. The U.S. is currently running well behind several well developed, > highly progressive nations such as Singapore and Thailand. So much for the > effects of being a "citizen" of one of the wealthiest nations on earth. You > conveniently fail to note that by far the *VAST* majority of the wealth in > this nation is owned and controlled by a very few people. The wealth of the > nation isn't in question. The poverty of a very large segment of our > population is. I've now looked up the actual infant mortality rates for the US and some other countries. The figures are: Infant deaths per 1000 in the first year: Sweden 7 Japan 8 US 13 New Zealand 14 Singapore 13 Jamaica 16 Cuba 19 Trinidad & Tob. 24 USSR 36 Saudi Arabia 118 Qatar 138 Sri Lanka 42 Bangladesh 136 Angola 192 These figures are for approximately 1979. They come from "Infant Mortality and the Health of Societies" by Kathleen Newland. According to the above book, infant mortality is a good indicator of the wealth of a country and of how equitably that wealth is distributed, since it is affected by factors such as nutrition and sanitation as well as medical facilities. Below a rate of about 15, however, specific medical procedures become more important than overall societal factors. These figures provide little evidence of widespread poverty in the US. Indeed, they show that by world standards there cannot be any large number of severely poor children in the US. The rate for blacks is about twice that for whites, however, confirming their continued lower position, though they're by no means badly off by world standards. The "Brittanica Book of the Year, 1985" claims that the US rate has since declined to 11 in 1981. The frequent claims by Marxist states to have greatly helped the health of the people are contradicted by these figures (e.g. compare Jamaica and Cuba, look at the USSR). Singapore's rate may well be lower than the US's for some year(s). It's clear from the figures that this says more about Singapore than about the US. Sri Lanka is clearly also due for congradulation - it's per capita income is very low. I don't have figures for Thailand. I think this conclusively proves my point that saying the majority of US children are poor is nonsense. They aren't poor by world standards, and obviously the *majority* can't be poor by relative standards. Radford Neal