The reason I posted the info on Ireland is that I think it is important to see the problems other countries are having.I think it is especially important to see what their situation is compared to ours because some of them continually Bash the US.This info comes from a site that is supposed to be the best site for UK Stats.
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Income analysis
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Key Facts

Income

The most commonly used threshold of low income is 60% of median income. In 2003/04, before deducting housing costs, this equated to ££200 per week for a couple with no children, £122 for a single person, £291 for a couple with two children and £214 for a lone parent with two children

In 2003/04, 12 million people in Great Britain were living in households below this income threshold. This represents a drop of 2 million since 1996/97. It is, however, still much higher than in the early 1980s.

The proportion of children and pensioners who live in low income households has been falling. In contrast, the proportion for working-age adults without dependent children has remained broadly unchanged. A third of all people in low income households are now working-age adults without dependent children (3.7 million people).

Disabled adults are twice as likely to live in low income households as non-disabled adults, and the gap has grown over the last decade.

The level of Income Support for both pensioners and families with two or more children has gone up much faster than average earnings in recent years, but that for working-age adults without children has fallen considerably behind.

Half of all people in social housing are on low incomes compared to one in six of those in other housing tenures.

Inner London is deeply divided: it has by far the highest proportion of people on a low income but also the highest proportion of people on a high income.

Around half of the people on low incomes live in the most deprived fifth of areas. The other half live outside of these areas.

Child poverty

The number of children living in low income households was 3½ million in 2003/04. This represents a drop of ¾ million since 1996/97.

Children are one and a half times more likely to live in a low income household as adults.

A half of all lone parents are in low income, two-and-a-half times the rate for couples with children.

Almost 2 million children live in workless households.

The Government's short term target for child poverty is to reduce the numbers by a quarter in the period 1998/99 to 2004. Achieving this will require a fall of 400,000 in the year 2004/05 (data to be published in April 2005).

Work

In 2005, there were 2.3 million people who wanted to be in paid work but were not. This compares with 3.4 million a decade previously. This rate of reduction is much less than the rate of reduction in ILO unemployment because the numbers who are 'economically inactive but would like work' have reduced at a much slower rate than unemployment.

One in five adults with a work-limiting disability are not working but want to. This compares with one in fifteen of those with no work-limiting disability. At all levels of qualification, the proportion of people with a work-limiting disability who lack but want paid work is much greater than for those without a work-limiting disability.

Around ½ million young adults aged 16 to 24 were unemployed in 2005 (around 10%). Numbers have reduced by a quarter over the last decade but young adult unemployment rates are now three times as high as those for older workers.

Two-fifths of those getting work are out-of-work again within six months. More than a quarter of temporary employees would like a permanent job.

People without qualifications are three times less likely to receive job-related training compared with those with some qualifications.

Low pay

5½ million adults aged 22 to retirement were paid less than £6.50 per hour in 2004. Two thirds of these were women and a half were part-time workers.

Almost a third of all employees aged 25 to retirement earning less than £6.50 per hour work in the public sector.

The lower a person's qualifications, the more likely they are to be low paid. For example, more than half of those with no qualifications earn less than £6.50 per hour.

15% of workers earning less than £6.50 an hour belong to a trade union compared with 40% of those earning £9 to £21 an hour.

Around 14% of working-age households are now in receipt of tax credits. In total, more than three times as many people are now in receipt of tax credits as were in receipt of Family Credit a decade ago.

Education

11-year-olds: The proportions failing to achieve level 4 or above at key stage 2 in English and Maths have fallen substantially in recent years but children in schools with relatively high numbers on free school meals continue to do much worse than other schools.

16-year olds: In 2003/04, 12% of pupils obtained less than 5 GCSEs and 6% got no grades at all, both figures being unchanged since 1998/99.

Most 17-year-olds with 5 or more good GCSEs go on to achieve further qualifications, but most 17-year-olds without such qualifications still lack NVQ2 or equivalent at age 25

One in four 19-year-olds still fail to achieve a basic level of qualification (NVQ2 or above).

10,000 pupils were permanently excluded from school in 2003/04. This represents a fall of a fifth since the peak in 1996/97.

Health

(Note: most of the statistics below relate to the year 2003, the latest year for which official data currently exists).

Scotland has by far the highest proportion of premature deaths for both men and women.

Adults in the poorest fifth of the income distribution are twice as likely to be at risk of developing a mental illness as those on average incomes.

Almost half of adults aged 45-64 in the poorest fifth of the population have a limiting longstanding illness or disability, twice the rate for those on average incomes.

Children from manual social backgrounds are 1½ times more likely to die as infants than children from non-manual social backgrounds.

Babies from manual social backgrounds are 1¼ times more likely to be of low birthweight than those from non-manual social backgrounds.

Teenage motherhood is seven times as common amongst those from manual social backgrounds as for those from professional backgrounds.

5-year-olds in Wales and Scotland have, on average, twice as many missing, decayed or filled teeth as 5-year-olds in the West Midlands and South East.

Crime

Both burglaries and violent crimes have halved over the last decade.

Households with no household insurance are around three times as likely to be burgled as those with insurance. Half of those on low income do not have any household insurance compared with a fifth for households on average incomes.

Housing

5% of people live in overcrowded conditions. Overcrowding is four times as prevalent in social rented housing as in owner-occupation

190,000 households were accepted by their local authority as homeless in 2004. This compares to 160,000 in 1997. It is households without dependent children where the numbers have been rising.

Although poorer households remain more likely to lack central heating, the proportion who do so is now actually less than that for households on average incomes in 1999/00.

The number of mortgage holders in serious arrears is at its lowest level for fifteen years.

Ethnic minorities

More than half of children in Pakistani and Bangladeshi households - and a half of the children in Black households - are in low income households.

People of African, Bangladeshi, Caribbean and Pakistani descent are all twice as likely as White people to be out of work but wanting work.

Although the rate of permanent exclusions for Black Caribbean pupils has halved in recent years, they are still three times more likely to be excluded as White pupils.

Black young adults are seven times as likely as white young adults to be in prison.

Black adults are twice as likely not to have a bank or building society account as the population as a whole.

Older people

The proportion of pensioners in low income has fallen from 27% in 1994/95 to 20% in 2003/04. All of the fall has been among single pensioners rather than pensioner couples. Pensioners are now less likely to live in low income households than non-pensioners.

In 2002/03, around two-fifths of pensioner households entitled to Council Tax Benefit were not claiming it, and a third of those entitled to Pension Credit were not claiming it

The proportion of people aged 75 and over who receive support from social services to help them live at home has almost halved over the last decade. County councils and unitary authorities support far fewer households than either urban or Welsh authorities.

Racism and classism are not due to George Bush in the rest of the world are they?