WASHINGTON: Poverty and inequality rates in the United States are alarming, poised to worsen under President Donald Trump and threatening the nation’s democracy, a top United Nations (UN) official said on Friday.

More than one in eight Americans live in poverty, nearly half of those live in what is considered “deep poverty” and most have no way of escaping their plight, said Philip Alston, UN special rapporteur on extreme poverty and human rights.

The UN official’s scathing outlook, which criticised US politics, policies and attitudes, came after he recently toured the country from homeless encampments in California to small towns in the South and the hurricane-devastated island of Puerto Rico.

The full report will not be published until spring, but Alston, appointed by the UN Human Rights Council to look at global poverty, delivered highlights at a news conference in Washington.

The nation’s dire poverty and inequality result from accumulated policies over many years but are about to grow worse under proposals backed by the Trump administration to reform taxes and cut welfare and health care programmes, he said.

A sweeping tax reform bill that benefits business and the wealthy, now before the US Congress, would create “the singlemost dramatic increase in inequality that could be imagined,” Alston said.

Looming cuts in welfare and healthcare will destroy a safety net for the poor that is already “riddled with holes,” he said.

“If the cuts that are anticipated are made, it will essentially be blown apart,” he said. “Inequality will skyrocket.”

One illustration of horrific poverty and inequality, he said, was the comeback of hookworm, an intestinal parasite, in the South where local governments fail to provide clean water and sanitation and force people to pay for such services themselves.

While statistics show 14 per cent of Americans live in poverty, so many more people live precariously on the edge that 20 per cent is a more realistic figure, he said.

For example, he cited Wal-Mart Stores Inc workers who rely on government-issued food stamps because they cannot survive on what they earn at their fulltime jobs.

The United States has the lowest rate of social mobility among the world’s rich countries, meaning “the American dream is rapidly becoming the American illusion,” he said.

Associated Press