News In Brief
| New York
Study says poor in US fare worse than in 7 like lands
Poor families have a harder time making ends meet in the US than in seven other major industrial countries, a study funded by the Social Security Administration says.
The three-year study by two Columbia University professors says poor families in Sweden, France, West Germany, England, Canada, Israel and Australia are treated more generously by their governments than their counterparts in America.
The study showed, for example, that in Sweden an unemployed single mother with two children is given public assistance worth 94 percent of what an average worker makes; in France the figure is 79 percent; and in Germany, 67 percent. But in New York State -- which is above the national average in terms of what it gives poor people -- the same figure would be only 55 percent.
