I find it interesting that people define US citizens as "rich" because of their per capita GDP. As some of you know, in high school we travelled around the states a lot for our band tours, and we always stayed in the homes of our American counterparts. During these trips, I noticed that more Americans in what is probably defined as the middle class have to worry about money. I wouldn't quite define this as poverty, although they certainly weren't well-off. They were in a situation where if they wanted something, they had to do some quick math in their heads first. If disaster struck, they could be ruined. And these were all people who were settled enough that they had a house and a family - they weren't immigrants, they weren't students, they were what I would define as grownups.

That's not to say there aren't people in the rest of the world in this position, but I find it occurs more rarely in Canada and in Europe. There is certainly poverty, especially among immigrants, but when you look at second-generation (or even first-and-a-half generation) or higher families who are settled enough to have started having kids, more of these households can afford to make impulse purchases, and can absorb an unexpected disaster (not that an unexpected disaster wouldn't affect them financially, but they wouldn't be ruined and they could recover).

A lot of this probably has to do with social programs - if I got pregnant or got cancer, I probably wouldn't have to pay a cent to get the medical facet of the problem dealt with. Perhaps, when trying to calculate a country's per-citizen wealth, they should somehow incorporate the social services to which citizens have access instead of straight GDP.