Extreme Poverty and Human Rights: A Case Study of the United States of America

This paper presents the problems of poverty in the U.S. from the perspective of the notion of “extreme poverty,” regarded as a violation of human rights. By choosing the United States as the case study, this paper seeks to illustrate that extreme poverty is a pervasive societal problem, irrespective of the level of income of a country. The case of the United States is particularly interesting as it presented an apparent paradox: the wealthiest country on earth has also the highest incidence of poverty amongst the rich industrialised nations and even higher than many developing countries.The paper provides a broad overview of various dimensions of extreme poverty in the United States through the lens of the human rights framework and offers some policy suggestions.