The 15 Most Impoverished Countries In The Developed World

04-15-2011 • BusinessInsider.com/

Since the mid-1980s, countries like UK, Japan and Israel have seen a steep increase in poverty rates, according to a new OECD report that looks at poverty across its member countries. We ranked high-income OECD economies based on their poverty rate and culled historical data to give a bigger picture of poverty in member nations. These countries, considered to be developed, had poverty rates that exceeded the OECD average of 11.1%. Chile for instance witnessed a drop in its poverty rate, but at 18.9% a vast portion of its population remains impoverished. Read on to see which countries have large impoverished populations. #4 United States Late-2000s poverty rate: 17.3% Mid-1980s poverty rate: 17.9% Annual change since the mid-1980s: -0.1% Poverty rate refers to percentage of persons living with less than 50% of median equivalised household income, late-2000s, according to OECD