A comprehensive Government Accountability Office study commissioned by Sen. Bernie Sanders and published Monday found that low-income Americans have significantly shorter lives than the rich, leading the Vermont senator to declare that poverty in the world’s wealthiest nation is a “death sentence.”
“Poverty is a life-threatening issue for millions of people in this country, and this report confirms it,” Sanders, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, said in a statement. “We are in a crisis never before seen in a rich, industrialized democracy.”
“Poverty is a life-threatening issue for millions of people in this country, and this report confirms it.”
—Sen. Bernie Sanders
To determine the relationship between wealth—or lack thereof—and life expectancy, the GAO examined a representative sample of Americans born from 1931 through 1941, making them between 51 and 61 years of age in 1992.