IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/ris/badest/0496.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Extreme Poverty and Human Rights: A Case Study of the United States of America

Author

Listed:
  • Sengupta, Arjun

    (Chairman, Centre for Development and Human Rights, New Delhi, India,)

Abstract

This paper presents the problems of poverty in the U.S. from the perspective of the notion of “extreme poverty,” regarded as a violation of human rights. By choosing the United States as the case study, this paper seeks to illustrate that extreme poverty is a pervasive societal problem, irrespective of the level of income of a country. The case of the United States is particularly interesting as it presented an apparent paradox: the wealthiest country on earth has also the highest incidence of poverty amongst the rich industrialised nations and even higher than many developing countries. The conditions of extreme poverty in a country such as the US, with both the resources and the institutions to solve the problem but unwilling to do so due to the lack of political motivation, can be, much more plausibly than in any other country, considered as violation of human rights. The paper provides a broad overview of various dimensions of extreme poverty in the United States through the lens of the human rights framework and offers some policy suggestions.

Suggested Citation

  • Sengupta, Arjun, 2010. "Extreme Poverty and Human Rights: A Case Study of the United States of America," Bangladesh Development Studies, Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), vol. 33(1-2), pages 275-310, March-Jun.
    • Handle: RePEc:ris:badest:0496
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://bids.org.bd/uploads/publication/BDS/33/33-1&2/06_Arjun_Sengupta.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Corak, Miles, 2005. "Principles and Practicalities for Measuring Child Poverty in the Rich Countries," IZA Discussion Papers 1579, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. A.B. Atkinson & John Hills, 1998. "Exclusion, Employment and Opportunity," CASE Papers 004, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE.
    3. Nord, Mark & Andrews, Margaret S. & Carlson, Steven, 2006. "Household Food Security in the United States, 2005," Economic Research Report 7243, United States Department of Agriculture, Economic Research Service.
    4. A.B. Atkinson & John Hills, 1998. "Exclusion, Employment and Opportunity," CASE Papers case04, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE.
    5. Miles Corak & *UNICEF, 2005. "Principles and Practicalities in Measuring Child Poverty for the Rich Countries," Papers inwopa05/27, Innocenti Working Papers.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Rojas, Mariano, 2011. "Poverty and psychological distress in Latin America," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 206-217, March.
    2. Mark Kleinman, 1998. "Include Me Out? The New Politics of Place and Poverty (published in "Policy Studies", 21:1, April 2000)," CASE Papers case11, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE.
    3. Tania Burchardt & Julian Le Grand, 2002. "Constraint and Opportunity: Identifying Voluntary Non-Employment," CASE Papers case55, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE.
    4. Maite Blázquez Cuesta & Santiago Budría, 2014. "Deprivation and Subjective Well-Being: Evidence from Panel Data," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 60(4), pages 655-682, December.
    5. John P. Haisken-DeNew & Mathias Sinning, 2007. "Social Deprivation and Exclusion of Immigrants in Germany," Ruhr Economic Papers 0031, Rheinisch-Westfälisches Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-Universität Bochum, Universität Dortmund, Universität Duisburg-Essen.
    6. Annie Abello & Rebecca Cassells & Anne Daly & Gabriela D’Souza & Riyana Miranti, 2016. "Youth Social Exclusion in Australian Communities: A New Index," Social Indicators Research: An International and Interdisciplinary Journal for Quality-of-Life Measurement, Springer, vol. 128(2), pages 635-660, September.
    7. Tindara Addabbo & Rosa García-Fernández & Carmen Llorca-Rodríguez & Anna Maccagnan, 2013. "The effect of the crisis on material deprivation in Italy and Spain," Department of Economics (DEMB) 0019, University of Modena and Reggio Emilia, Department of Economics "Marco Biagi".
    8. Frank A Cowell & Christian Schluter, 1998. "Measuring Income Mobility with Dirty Data (published in Ethnic and Racial Studies, 22(3), May 1999)," CASE Papers 016, Centre for Analysis of Social Exclusion, LSE.
    9. Gornick, Janet C. & Jäntti, Markus, 2012. "Child poverty in cross-national perspective: Lessons from the Luxembourg Income Study," Children and Youth Services Review, Elsevier, vol. 34(3), pages 558-568.
    10. Maite Blázquez Cuesta & Elena Cottini & Herrarte, A. (Ainhoa), 2012. "GINI DP 39: Socioeconomic Gradient in Health: How Important is Material Deprivation?," GINI Discussion Papers 39, AIAS, Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Labour Studies.
    11. repec:dau:papers:123456789/4994 is not listed on IDEAS
    12. Julia Rouse & Dilani Jayawarna, 2011. "Structures of Exclusion from Enterprise Finance," Environment and Planning C, , vol. 29(4), pages 659-676, August.
    13. Tsakloglou, Panos & Papadopoulos, Fotis, 2001. "Indicators of social exclusion in euromod," EUROMOD Working Papers EM8/01, EUROMOD at the Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    14. Darmody, Merike & Smyth, Emer, 2018. "The goals and governance of the social inclusion and community activation programme (SICAP) 2015-2017: a mixed methods study," Research Series, Economic and Social Research Institute (ESRI), number RS68, June.
    15. Yuka Fujimoto & Jasim Uddin, 2022. "Inclusive Leadership for Reduced Inequality: Economic–Social–Economic Cycle of Inclusion," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 181(3), pages 563-582, December.
    16. Carlos Gradín & Olga Cantó, 2009. "Why are child poverty rates so persistently high in Spain?," Working Papers 123, ECINEQ, Society for the Study of Economic Inequality.
    17. Zachary Parolin, 2017. "Applying Augmented Survey Data to Produce More Accurate, Precise, and Internationally Comparable Estimates of Poverty within the 50 United States," LIS Working papers 696, LIS Cross-National Data Center in Luxembourg.
    18. Stefan Buzar, 2007. "When Homes Become Prisons: The Relational Spaces of Postsocialist Energy Poverty," Environment and Planning A, , vol. 39(8), pages 1908-1925, August.
    19. Christopher T. Whelan & Bertrand Maitre, 2008. "“New” and “Old” Social Risks: Life Cycle and Social Class Perspectives on Social Exclusion in Ireland," The Economic and Social Review, Economic and Social Studies, vol. 39(2), pages 131-156.
    20. repec:gdk:wpaper:11 is not listed on IDEAS
    21. Nicolai Suppa, 2021. "Walls of glass. Measuring deprivation in social participation," The Journal of Economic Inequality, Springer;Society for the Study of Economic Inequality, vol. 19(2), pages 385-411, June.
    22. Patricio S. Dalton & Sayantan Ghosal & Anandi Mani, 2016. "Poverty and Aspirations Failure," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 126(590), pages 165-188, February.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Poverty and Human Rights; The United States of America;

    JEL classification:

    • A10 - General Economics and Teaching - - General Economics - - - General

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ris:badest:0496. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Meftaur Rahman, Cheif Publication Officer, BIDS (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bidssbd.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.