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Tomorrow, the U.S. Census Bureau will release its annual poverty report. Conventional wisdom holds that the U.S. has a small social-welfare system and far more poverty, compared with other affluent nations. But noted liberal scholars Irwin Garfinkel, Lee Rainwater, and Timothy Smeeding challenge such simplistic ideas in their book Wealth and Welfare States: Is America a Laggard or Leader? Garfinkel and his colleagues examine social-welfare spending and poverty in rich nations. They define social welfare as having five components: health-care spending; education spending; cash retirement benefits; other government cash transfers such as unemployment insurance and the earned-income tax credit (EITC); and non-cash aid such as food stamps and public housing...

...government spending in the U.S. is more tightly targeted to benefit the poor and elderly...

...Only one nation (Norway) spends more per person than the U.S. spends.

How much of this spending reaches the poor? The Left often claims that the U.S has a far higher poverty rate than other developed nations have. These claims are based on a “relative poverty” standard, in which being “poor” is defined as having an income below 50 percent of the national median. Since the median income in the United States is substantially higher than the median income in most European countries, these comparisons establish a higher hurdle for escaping from “poverty” in the U.S. than is found elsewhere....

Read more at: http://www.nationalreview.com/article/42...-dwarfs-europes

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This has some interesting facts and stats. And, conclusions.