US is ahead of China - in poverty stakes

Statistics can be a blur, but recently one piece of data stood out like a beacon. According to World Bank statistics, China now has fewer people living below the poverty line than the United States.

President Xi Jinping has made eradicating poverty one of his main targets, and he has so far been spectacularly successful. World Bank data show 500 million people were lifted out of poverty between 1981 - when the figure was 81 percent of the population - and 2012, when the number of people living on less than $1.90 a day in local purchasing terms fell to 6.5 percent.

Now, that figure is even lower - World Bank extrapolation of data estimates it was as low as 4.1 percent of the population in 2014. Just compare that to the US, where the latest figures available, from the 2015 Census Bureau, show 13.5 percent of its citizens living in poverty. Of those, 50 percent live below the threshold set by the government, a complex measure of diet, family size and the age of the main householders.