Twice as Many People in America Cannot Afford Food Than in China
A Gallup Poll survey released on Thursday found that now more Americans lack access to basic necessities than they did at the peak of the Great Recession.
The United States’ Basic Index Score is a Gallup measure of the American populaces’ access to basic necessitates such as food and shelter and this year the number of Americans with access to these services had dropped.
The poll said, “American’s access to basic necessities has never fully recovered after declining amid the 2008 to 2009 financial crisis and has declined further since February of this year.”
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Three of the basic access index items on the poll that have declined the most include having a personal doctor, having health insurance, and visiting a dentist.
The findings of the poll are based upon more than 29,000 interviews conducted between January 2008 through September 2011.
The Gallup Poll also conducted similar surveys in China and discovered that the Chinese are struggling less than Americans to put food on their tables.
The survey asked individuals from both China and America, “Have there been times in the past 12 months when you did not have enough money to buy food that you or your family needed?”
The survey produced interesting results showing that in China only 6 percent of people said that they did not have enough money to buy food that they or their family needed, whereas in the United States, 19 percent of people responded that they did not have enough money for food.
From 2008 to 2011 the number of people who had a lack of access to money for food declined in China 10 percent, whereas in the United States, the number more than doubled from 9 percent to 19 percent.
Although the Chinese still struggle more than Americans to provide adequate housing or shelter for themselves, the trend is actually reversing with the numbers showing that less and less Chinese struggle to find housing while more and more Americans struggle to provide adequate shelter for themselves.
The new Gallup Poll has come out following a recent Census Bureau report that showed that poverty in America went to its highest level since 1993 last year with 46.2 million Americans living below the poverty line.
