The U.N. recently declared that 40 million Americans live in poverty, and 18.5 million live in “extreme poverty.” Extreme poverty is the severe deprivation of basic human needs, including food, clean water, health, shelter, and education. Many of those living in extreme poverty earn less than $4/day, which is not enough to sustain a proper state of living in the United States. The government’s underestimation, or the U.N.’s overestimation, has led to a debate regarding the threshold of extreme poverty. In all honesty, the current estimates seems to be a bit low, considering that an extremely large number of Americans are homeless in the status quo. This underestimation is detrimental to facing the eminent problem facing the country right now and the population of individuals facing extreme poverty is constantly increasing. We need to face the fact that millions live in extreme poverty, and we need to adjust/increase our estimates accordingly as we try to address this issue, otherwise the problem will never be resolved.
– Siya Sharma (10th Grade Student, Santa Clara, CA)
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