US poverty worse under Trump

GENEVA: Poverty in the United States is extensive and deepening under the Trump Administration, whose policies seem aimed at removing the safety net from millions of poor people, while rewarding the rich, a UN human rights investigator has found.

Philip Alston, UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty, called on US authorities to provide solid social protection and address underlying problems, rather than ‘‘punishing and imprisoning the poor’’.

In a report, Alston said that as welfare benefits and access to health insurance were being slashed, President Donald Trump’s tax reform awarded ‘‘financial windfalls’’ to the megarich and large companies, further increasing inequality.

Extreme poverty in the United States, however, is not new. Alston said US policies since President Lyndon Johnson’s war on poverty in the 1960s had been ‘‘neglectful at best’’.

‘‘But the policies pursued over the past year seem deliberately designed to remove basic protections from the poorest, punish those who are not in employment and make even basic healthcare into a privilege to be earned rather than a right of citizenship,’’ Alston said.

The White House did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

A US official in Geneva said: ‘‘The Trump Administration has

made it a priority to provide economic opportunity for all Americans.’’

Alston said almost 41 million Americans, or 12.7%, lived in poverty, 18.5 million in extreme poverty, and children accounted for one in three poor. The United States had the highest youth poverty rate among industrialised countries, he added.

However, the data from the US Census Bureau he cited covers only the period through 2016, and he gave no comparative figures

for before and after Trump came into office in January 2017.

Alston, a veteran UN rights expert and New York University law professor, will present his report to the United Nations Human Rights Council later this month.

It is based on a mission by the Australian in December to several US states, including rural Alabama, a slum in downtown Los Angeles, California, and the US territory of Puerto Rico.

Alston said a tax overhaul that passed the Republicancontrolled US Congress in December would ensure the US remained the most unequal society in the developed world.

Trump has said tax cuts will lead to more takehome pay for workers and has touted bonuses some workers received from their employers as evidence the law is working.

The tax code also includes a measure to support locally directed efforts to fight unemployment and poverty.