We're Better off Than Egypt -- Right? Let's Take a Look.

By Richard (RJ) Eskow

19.6% of Egyptians and 14.5% of Americans live below the poverty line. 21% of Egyptians are considered "near poor," and 40% of Americans will fall below the poverty line at some point in their lives. One in six American children lives in poverty. So do one in four African Americans, which means the poverty rate for African Americans is greater than it is for Egyptians.

Life for the Egyptian poor can be much harsher than we're used to seeing here. Roughly 3.8% of Egyptians live in "extreme poverty," which means they don't have enough to eat on a daily basis. While that level of poverty's much rarer here, 14.7% of US households experienced "food insecurity" in 2009, according to the USDA, a measure which includes uncertainty about the ability to buy enough food and the inability to purchase it. In 2008, 17.3 million Americans lived in a household where one or more people went hungry during the year because there wasn't enough money for food.

Egyptian health statistics aren't all that different from those of African Americans. An African American male born in this country has a shorter life expectancy than an Egyptian (70 years, versus 72.4 years). Infant mortality (the death of a child before his or her first birthday) is much worse in Egypt (25 per 1,000 birth) than it is in the United States (6.9 per 1,000), but African American infant mortality is 14.1 - nearly 2.5 times that of Caucuasians. And the gap between white infant mortality and that of African Americans and Native Americans increased during the last decade, while Egypt's rate continued to improve.  | OurFuture.org