The costs of the election campaigns of two US presidential hopefuls, Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, have totaled $1.63bn in the recent year. This tidy sum could have been spent to meet the needs of 3.3 million poor Americans.

The US maintains the third largest economy in the world, and is considered as a military and political superpower. Thirty-Four percent of the world’s billionaires are Americans.

However, based on facts and figures, and in accordance to the poverty line set by the US administration; 49 million Americans, including 16.7 million children, live below the poverty line. The number of poor Americans in the year 2011 stood at 46.2 million people, which significantly surged by the year 2013.

The US federal government has set the poverty line at $23550 per annum for a family of four.  This is while the expenses of the US presidential election campaigns have stood at $1.6bn in the past year.

MR/SS