Diverging Paths: How China Lifted a Billion While US Poverty Tripled

The economic tales of China and the United States offer a stark contrast in global development priorities. China successfully eradicated extreme poverty, a stunning achievement that saw the number of citizens living on less than $3 a day drop from close to one billion in 1990 to none by 2019, signifying a monumental societal shift.
In the US, the trend has been reversed. Over four million Americans now live in the direst poverty, surviving on less than $3 a day, marking a three-fold increase over 35 years. This deepens the uncomfortable reality that America’s economic success is not translating into widespread well-being for its poorest citizens.
This deepening US inequality is driven by political decisions, not market inevitability. Systematic policy choices—such as tax cuts for the wealthy and reductions to social safety nets—have directed national prosperity toward the top, leaving the poorest 10% of Americans with a smaller share of national income than low-income earners in Nigeria, China, or Bangladesh.