摘要：Consider the images of starving children in Africa, Asia, or Latin America accompanying appeals for humanitarian aid. It is not difficult to understand why people deprived of the most basic material necessities for subsistence — adequate food, clean water, shelter from extreme heat or cold — would suffer high rates of preventable disease, disability, and premature death. Poverty in developing countries is often defined as living on less than $2.00 per person per day (1). By those terms, very few people in the United States would be poor. But poverty criteria for poor countries are not applicable in affluent countries with far higher living costs. The official U.S. poverty guideline in 2005 was an annual income of $19,350 for a family of four (2), which would represent wealth in many poor countries (3). Why, then, are Preventing Chronic Disease and other U.S. journals participating in this multi-journal issue, to be released October 22, 2007, on poverty and human development? Is it simply a magnanimous gesture to support fighting poverty and its adverse health consequences in poor countries, or is poverty an issue we must address at home?
