III. On Living Conditions of US Laborers
Although the United States is the world's No. one developed nation, the US government has to date refused to ratify the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights. Itis apathetic to the rights and interests of ordinary workers in economic, social and cultural aspects, leading to serious problemssuch as poverty, hunger and homelessness.
The disparity between the rich and the poor keep widening in the United States. A 2003 report by the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) under the US Congress acknowledged that the gap between the rich and the poor in the country today is wider than anytime in nearly 70 years, with the wealth of the country's richest one percent population exceeding the overall possessions of the needy, who account for 40 percent of the total population. In 2000, the rich people's wealth makes up 15.5 percent of the country's overall national income, as against 7.5 percent in 1979 (according to BBC report on Sept. 25, 2003).
A report by the US Federal Reserve also showed that between 1998 and 2001, the wealth gap between the country's richest and poorest had widened by 70 percent (see Britain's Guardian report on Jan. 24, 2003).
Certain policies of the US government, instead of helping narrowing the country's wealth gap, have aggravated the rich-poor disparity and led to an unfair distribution of wealth. According to a report by the US Environmental Working Group in 2003, the agricultural policy of the US government has ensured 70 percent ofthe government subsidies go to ranch owners, resulting in a yawning income gap between ranch owners and ordinary farmers and pushing many farmers to the verge of bankruptcy (ABC report on Oct.9, 2003).
The population living in need and hunger in the United States has been on a steady rise. According to statistics from the 2003 economic report of the US Census Bureau, the impoverished population in the United States had been increasing for two consecutive years, reaching 34.6 million, or 12.1 percent of the total population, in 2002, up 1.7 million over the previous year. The country's poverty ratio in 2002 had risen by 0.4 percentage points over the previous year. Among the impoverished population, the number of extremely needy people had risen to 14.1 million from the previous 13.4 million, and the proportion of children in need had gone up to 16.7 percent in 2002 from 16.3 percent in 2001.Since 2001, the number of needy families in the United States has been growing at 6 percent a year, and there are now 7.3 million impoverished families in the country, which means 31 million people are facing the threat of hunger. In the 25 leading metropolises of the United States, the number of people who need emergency food aid has increased by 19 percent on average, while the number of people who live on charity food coupons, or those who have to queue up for free food distributions, has surged to 22million (see Spain's El Mundo on May 19, 2003).
In October 2003, the US Department of Agriculture released a report, which showed that in 2002 there were 12 million American families worrying about their food expenditures and 3.8 million families with members who actually suffered from hunger. On December 18, 2003, an annual survey report released at the US Conference of Mayors showed that in the 25 cities surveyed, the number of people seeking emergency food aid in 2003 had increased by 17 percent on average over 2002. Moreover, 87 percent of the surveyed cities believed that the number of such people would continue to rise in 2004.